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African American History - Civil Rights Movement

List of Selected Works

Below are books, videos and websites that the library has curated on this topic. We have many more sources than what is listed here. You can learn how to search for more books, videos and articles by going to the "Searching for" tabs on the left.

Books

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Waging a Good War: a military history of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968 by Thomas E. Ricks, 2023.

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Dancing down the barricades : Sammy Davis Jr. and the long civil rights era : a cultural history by Matthew Frye Jacobson, 2023.

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You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live: 10 Weeks in Birmingham that Changed America by t Paul Kix, 2023.

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 The Three Mothers : How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation by Anna Malaika Tubbs. 2021.

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King: a Life by Jonathan Eig, 2023.

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Being Somebody and Black Besides : An Untold Memoir of Midcentury Black Life by George B. Nesbitt, 2021.

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Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer by Kate Clifford Larson, 2021.

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Freedom Libraries: The Untold Story of Libraries for African-Americans in the South by Mike Selby, 2019.

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Revolution in Black and White : Photographs of the Civil Rights Era by Ernest C. Withers, 2019.

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From Sit-Ins to SNCC: the student civil rights movement in the 1960s. Edited by Iwan W. Morgan and Philip Davies, 2012.

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A Decisive Decade: an insider's view of the Chicago civil rights movement during the 1960s by Robert B. McKersie, 2013.

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Freedom's Daughters: the unsung heroines of the civil rights movement from 1830 to 1970 by Lynne Olson, 2001.

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Voices of Freedom: an oral history of the civil rights movement from the 1950s through the 1980s by Henry Hampton, Steve Fayer, and Sarah Flynn, 1990.

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Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement by John Lewis, 1998.

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The Freedom Schools: student activists in the Mississippi civil rights movement by Jon N. Hale, 2016.

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Ring Out Freedom! :  the voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the making of the civil rights movement by Fredrik Sunnemark, 2004.

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Time on Two Crosses:  the collected writings of Bayard Rustin by Bayard Rustin, 2003.

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Ella Baker: Freedom Bound by Joanne Grant, 1998.

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The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader: documents, speeches, and firsthand accounts from the Black freedom struggle. Edited by Carson, Clayborne, Garrow, David J., Gill, Gerald R., Harding, Vincent, Hine, Darlene Clark, 1991.

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Malcolm X: As They Knew Him. Compiled by David Gallen. 1992.

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This Is the Day: the March on Washington by Leonard Freed, 2013

Videos

Eyes on the Prize DVD set

Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement 1954-1985. (14 separate videos). PBS. 1994.

Thurgood Marshall, 1967.

Mr. Civil Rights: Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP, 2014. PBS. 57 min.

President Johnson

Lyndon B. Johnson: Civil Rights Address, 1965. Educational Video Group, 46 min.

James Baldwin

James Baldwin: Speech on Civil Rights. 1968. Educational Video Group, 18 min.

poster for the movie Barber of Birmingham

The Barber of Birmingham : Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement, 2011. Chicken & Egg Pictures, 26 min.

Websites

Library of Congress logo

"Civil Rights History Project." Library of Congress Digital Collections, Library of Congress.

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"Voices from the Southern Civil Rights Movement." American Archive of Public Broadcasting, edited by Alan Gevison.

logo of National Museum of African American History & Culture

"Civil Rights History Project: Interviews with Freedom Movement Participants." National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution.