Civil Rights & Liberties

In 1972, during the Black Power Movement, iconoclast Dick Gregory challenged one of the foundations of America itself - its history, which had been written almost exclusively from the white male perspective....

Much of America did not know the radical King - and too few know today - but the FBI and US government did. They called him "the most dangerous man in America"....

Celebrated feminist advocate Caroline Criado Perez investigates the shocking root cause of gender inequality and research in Invisible Women, diving into women's lives at home, the workplace, the public square, the doctor's office, and more....

Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files.

Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project....

How did America cease to be the land of opportunity? We take it for granted that good neighborhoods—with good schools and good housing—are only accessible to the wealthy. But in America, this wasn’t always the case.

From the National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning comes a “groundbreaking” (Time) approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society and in ourselves—now updated, with a new preface....

Jonathan Turley takes a timely, revelatory look at freedom of speech—our most basic right and the one that protects all the others....

From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, the second part of his epic trilogy on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the American Civil Rights Movement....

First published in 1971, Rules for Radicals is Saul Alinsky's impassioned counsel to young radicals on how to effect constructive social change....

Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world....

Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature” have repeatedly won the day....

A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world....

A comprehensive, authoritative biography of Civil Rights icon John Lewis, “the conscience of the Congress,” John Lewis draws on interviews with Lewis and approximately 275 others who knew him at various stages of his life, as well as never-before-used FBI files and documents.

From before the dawn of the 20th century until the arrival of the New Deal, one of the most protracted and deadly labor struggles in American history was waged in West Virginia....

The acclaimed author of the “stirring, definitive, and engrossing” (NPR) The Woman’s Hour returns with the story of four activists whose audacious plan to restore voting rights to Black Americans laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement.

This audiobook narrated by Ruha Benjamin offers an inspiring and uniquely personal vision of how we can build a more just world one small change at a time....

Michael J. Sandel shows how a surer grasp of philosophy can help us to make sense of politics, morality, and our own convictions as well....

The Spirit of Justice reveals the stories of the people who fought against racism and agitated for justice—and what we can learn from their example, their suffering, their methods, and their hope.

The most toxic racial arguments share one of five traits. They try to erase Black history, prioritize white victimhood, deny Black oppression, promote myths of Black inferiority, or rebrand racism as something else entirely....

A major American intellectual makes the historical case that the reforms of the 1960s, reforms intended to make the nation more just and humane, instead left many Americans feeling alienated, despised, misled - and ready to put an adventurer in the White House....

A bold and impassioned meditation on injustice in our country that punctures the illusion of a postracial America and reveals it as a place where authoritarianism looms large....

This engaging memoir, originally published 1970, relates Ida B. Wells’ private life as a mother as well as her public activities as a teacher, lecturer, and journalist in her fight for equality and justice....

Winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. The story of Thurgood Marshall's defense - depsite death threats and KKK intimidation - of four Black youths falsely accused of rape....

The acclaimed author of I Wish You Love, Karen Chilton explores the life of legendary jazz performer and civil rights activist Hazel Scott....

Muhammad Ali, never afraid to express himself loudly and boldly, stays true to form in Ali in Me, an eight-part audio series that explores his life and legacy, guided by his own words through never-before-heard audio recordings. Hosted by Muhammad’s widow, Lonnie Ali, and his close friend, award-winning broadcaster John Ramsey, Ali in Me goes beyond the boxing ring to delve deeply into the extraordinary life and lasting contributions The Champ made to individuals around the world.

In this illuminating debut, Yoni Appelbaum, historian and journalist for The Atlantic, shows us that this idea has been under attack since reformers first developed zoning laws to ghettoize Chinese Americans in nineteenth-century Modesto, California. The century of legal segregation that ensued—from the zoning laws enacted to force Jewish workers back into New York’s Lower East Side to the private-sector discrimination and racist public policy that trapped Black families in Flint, Michigan to Jane Jacobs’ efforts to protect her vision of the West Village.

Keeonna and Jason met as young teens. Only fourteen, Keeonna had never had a boyfriend before, dreamed of attending Spelman to become an obstetrician, and thought she was “grown.” Within a year she was pregnant and Jason was in prison, convicted of a carjacking and sentenced to twenty-two years. Overnight Keeonna had become a “mainline mama,” a parent facing the task of raising a child—while still growing up herself—with an incarcerated partner.

Get a deeper understanding of police shootings through interviews with officers involved in real-life cases. Today’s media is filled with discussions about officer-involved shootings. Too often missing from that discussion are the police officers’ voices and the reality of what happens in actual shooting incidents. Through actual interviews with involved officers, this book addresses common myths and misunderstandings about these shootings. Shots Fired is a journey “behind the shield” and the experiences of the real human beings behind the badge.

Twelve Steps for White America: For a United States of America answers the revolutionary call of James Baldwin in “The Fire Next Time” for new standards for white Americans. Educator and former psychotherapist William Watson presents a treatment plan for democracy, an innovative framework of steps white Americans can take (and all individuals and organizations can incorporate) to right our nation’s course to peace and prosperity through justice then liberty for all.