Bent Northrop Memorial Library

A poem of the American experience before, during, and after the civil rights movement

Publisher Annotation: On May 4, 1961, a group of thirteen black and white civil rights activists launched the Freedom Ride, aiming to challenge the practice of segregation on buses and at bus terminal facilities in the South. The Ride would last twelve days. Despite the fact that segregation on buses crossing state lines was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1946, and segregation in interstate transportation facilities was ruled unconstitutional...

"Mississippi. 1966. On a hot June afternoon an African-American man named James Meredith set out to walk through his home state, intending to fight racism and fear with his feet. A seemingly simple plan, but one teeming with risk. Just one day later Meredith was shot and wounded in a roadside ambush. Within twenty-four hours, Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokely Carmichael, and other civil rights leaders had taken up Meredith's cause, determined to overcome...

Penn Cage is caught in the darkest maelstrom of his life. The death of his father's African-American nurse has fractured his family and turned Dr. Tom Cage into a fugitive. Penn has inadvertently started a war with an offshoot of the KKK, and Penn's fiancee, journalist Caitlin Masters, is chasing the biggest story of her career. Both Caitlin and Federal authorities believe Tom can lead them to evidence of America's most shameful history, a time when...

In a sixth memoir, the author and poet describes her return from Africa to the U.S., her work with the civil rights movement, and the writing of her first autobiographical work, "I know Why the Caged Bird Sings."

Combines ethics, history, law, and science with a personal narrative to describe how to move beyond the awareness of racism and contribute to making society just and equitable.

When a burning cross set by the Klan causes panic and fear in 1932 Bumblebee, North Carolina, fifth-grader Stella must face prejudice and find the strength to demand change in her segregated town.

In the summer of 1968, after travelling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.

Joseph traces the history of Black Power in the United States from the movement's origins in 1966 to the present, discussing the civil rights activists who have fought for the cause, the movement's impact on American history, the controversies surrounding it, and other related topics.

From celebrated Congressman John Lewis comes an eyewitness account of history from a key member of the Civil Rights Movement and confidant to Martin Luther King Jr.
In turbulent times Americans look to the Civil Rights Movement as the apotheosis of political expression. As we confront a startling rise in racism and hate speech and remain a culture scarred by social inequality, there's no better time to revisit the lessons of the '60s...