RECOMMENDED READINGS
CHAPTER ONE: WHITE SUPREMACY AND THE FOUNDING OF THE NAACP
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans
Grace Elizabeth Hale, Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890–1940
David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: A Biography, 1868–1963
Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan
Mary White Ovington, Black and White Together: The Reminiscences of an NAACP Founder
CHAPTER TWO: ORIGINS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church
Gilbert King, Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America
Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow
Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue: The Depression Decade
Patricia Sullivan, Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement
CHAPTER THREE: WORLD WAR II
Jervis Anderson, A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait
Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy
Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration
CHAPTER FOUR: PRESIDENT TRUMAN AND THE ROAD TO BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION
Anne Braden, The Wall Between
Martin Duberman, Paul Robeson: A Biography
Catherine Fosl, Subversive Southerner: Ann Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South
Myles Horton and Paulo Freire, We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change
CHAPTER FIVE: BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION
Devery Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement
Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality
Neil R. McMillen, The Citizens’ Council: A History of Organized Southern White Resistance to the Second Reconstruction
Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change
Howell Raines, My Soul Is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered
CHAPTER SIX: THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT
Virginia Foster Durr, Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr
Robert Graetz, A White Preacher’s Message on Race and Reconciliation
Fred Gray, Bus Ride to Justice
Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr., Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
Rosa Parks, Rosa Parks: My Story
Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It
Jeanne Theoharis, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE 1956 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION AND THE 1957 CIVIL RIGHTS ACT
Jack Bass, Taming the Storm: The Life and Times of Judge Frank M. Johnson and the South’s Fight over Civil Rights
Jack Bloom, Class, Race, and the Civil Rights Movement: The Changing Political Economy of Southern Racism
Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908–1960
Adam Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr.
CHAPTER EIGHT: LITTLE ROCK, 1957
Carol Anderson, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
Daisy Bates, The Long Shadow of Little Rock: A Memoir
Melba Patillo Beals, Warriors Don’t Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High
CHAPTER NINE: THE SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE
Ralph Abernathy, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: An Autobiography
Constance Curry, et al., eds. Deep in Our Hearts: Nine White Women of the Civil Rights Movement
Adam Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Joanne Grant, Ella Baker: Freedom Bound
Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision
CHAPTER TEN: THE SIT-INS AND THE FOUNDING OF SNCC
William Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom
Wesley Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC’s Dream for a New America
Faith Holsaert, et al., eds. Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC
CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE STUDENT NONVIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE
Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s
John Lewis with Michael D’Orso, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement
Howard Zinn, SNCC: The New Abolitionists
CHAPTER TWELVE: THE FREEDOM RIDES
Raymond Arsenault, Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice
James Farmer, Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement
Timothy Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: KENNEDY AND CIVIL RIGHTS, 1961
Vicki L. Crawford, Jacqueline Anne Rouse, and Barbara Woods, eds., Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941–1965
Roy Wilkins and Tom Matthews, Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins
Harris Wofford, Of Kennedys and Kings: Making Sense of the Sixties
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: ALBANY, GEORGIA, 1961
Clayborne Carson, ed., The “Student Voice,” 1960–1965: Periodical of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Cynthia Griggs Fleming, Soon We Will Not Cry: The Liberation of Ruby Doris Smith Robinson
Lynne Olson, Freedom’s Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970
Fred Powledge, Free at Last? The Civil Rights Movement and the People Who Made It
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: MISSISSIPPI VOTER REGISTRATION
John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi
Chana Kai Lee, For Freedom’s Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer
Kay Mills, This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer
Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: BIRMINGHAM
Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963–65
Thomas Jackson, From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Struggle for Economic Justice
Diane McWhorter, Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: MISSISSIPPI, MEDGAR EVERS, AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS BILL
Charlie Cobb, This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible
James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries
Robert D. Loevy, To End All Segregation: The Politics of the Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON
John D’Emilio, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin
Kenneth O’Reilly, “Racial Matters”: The FBI’s Secret File on Black America, 1960–1972
Athan Theoharis and John Stuart Cox, The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition
Gary Younge, The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream
CHAPTER NINETEEN: THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT
Robert Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon B Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963–69
Barbara Jordan and Elspeth D. Rostow, eds., The Great Society: A Twenty-Year Critique
Charles Whalen and Barbara Whalen, The Longest Debate: A Legislative History of the 1964 Civil Rights Act
CHAPTER TWENTY: MISSISSIPPI FREEDOM SUMMER, 1964
Eric Burner, And Gently He Shall Lead Them: Robert Parris Moses and Civil Rights in Mississippi
Elizabeth Sutherland Martínez, Letters from Mississippi: Reports from Civil Rights Volunteers and Freedom School Poetry of the 1964 Freedom Summer
Nicolaus Mills, Like a Holy Crusade: Mississippi 1964, the Turning Point of the Civil Rights Movement in America
Howard Zinn, The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: SELMA, ALABAMA, AND THE 1965 VOTING RIGHTS ACT
John Dittmer, The Good Doctors: The Medical Committee for Human Rights and the Struggle for Social Justice in Health Care
Gary May, The Informant: The FBI, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Murder of Viola Liuzzo
Sheyann Webb, Selma, Lord, Selma: Girlhood Memories of the Civil Rights Days
Howard Zinn, The Southern Mystique
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: VIETNAM, BLACK POWER, AND THE ASSASSINATION OF MARTIN LUTHER KING
H. Rap Brown, Die Nigger Die!
Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) and Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture)
Matthew Countryman, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia
Michael Honey, Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign
Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt
Peniel Joseph, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X
Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
Hampton Sides, Hellhound on His Trail: The Electrifying Account of the Largest Manhunt in American History
GENERAL
Julian Bond and Andrew Lewis, Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table
Clayborne Carson, The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader: Documents, Speeches, and Firsthand Accounts from the Black Freedom Struggle, 1954–1990
Henry Hampton, Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s Through the 1980s