1950s/Civil Rights
Lester, Julius. Guardian. HarperCollins Publishers. 2008. ISBN-13: 9780061558900 870L
In the summer of 1946, in a small town in the deep South, the cruelty of racism abruptly changes the life of a 14-year-old boy. Ansel, the white son of the town storekeeper, has always been best friends with Willie, who is African American, despite the common prejudice against "niggers." Ansel has a crush on alluring Mary Susan, the preacher's daughter who knows the power of her ripening body, but so does Zeph, the nasty son of the man who owns much of the town. When Willie's father, shell-shocked in the war, runs out of the church to say he's just found Mary Susan stabbed to death, and that he saw Zeph do it, Ansel and his father rush to the scene. They find Zeph covered in blood, holding a knife—and accusing Willie's father of the crime. Ansel's father, fearful of town vengeance, insists to his son they "didn't see a damn thing." And so Willie's father is lynched, with Ansel in the crowd. And while Ansel understands that telling the truth would not have saved the man, he can't forgive himself for keeping quiet, even when he leaves for school in Massachusetts, grows up and becomes a lawyer.
Crowe, Chris. Mississippi Trial, 1955. Penguin Group . 2003. ISBN-13: 9780142501924 870L
At first Hiram is excited to visit his hometown in Mississippi. But soon after he arrives, he crosses paths with Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago who is also visiting for the summer, and Hiram sees firsthand how the local whites mistreat blacks who refuse to "know their place." When Emmett's tortured dead body is found floating in a river, Hiram is determined to find out who could do such a thing. But what will it cost him to know? Mississippi Trial, 1955 is a gripping read, based on true events that helped spark the Civil Rights Movement.
Draper, Sharon M. Fire from the Rock. Penguin Group. 2008. ISBN-13: 9780142411995
Sylvia is shocked and confused when she is asked to be one of the first black students to attend Central High School, which is scheduled to be integrated in the fall of 1957, whether people like it or not. Before Sylvia makes her final decision, smoldering racial tension in the town ignites into flame. When the smoke clears, she sees clearly that nothing is going to stop the change from coming. It is up to her generation to make it happen, in as many different ways as there are colors in the world.
Roberts, Gene. The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 2008. ISBN-13: 9780307455949 eBook
Faced with "a flying wedge of white toughs coming at him" as he interviewed a black woman after the 1955 Emmett Till lynching trial, NBC reporter John Chancellor thrust his microphone toward them, saying, "I don't care what you're going to do to me, but the whole world is going to know it." This gripping account of how America and the world found out about the Civil Rights movement is written by two veteran journalists of the "race beat" from 1954 to 1965. Building on an exhaustive base of interviews, oral histories and memoirs, news stories and editorials, they reveal how prescient Gunnar Myrdal was in asserting that "to get publicity is of the highest strategic importance to the Negro people." The New York Times and other major media take center stage, but the authors provide a fresh account of the black press's trajectory from a time when black reporters searched "for stories white reporters didn't even know about" through the loss of the black press's "eyewitness position on the story" in Little Rock to its recovery with the Freedom Rides.
Senna, Danzy. Caucasia. Penguin Group. 2003. ISBN-13: 9781573227162
Pitch-perfect period details and a superbly empathic protagonist -- upon whose body racial dissonance is literally played out -- form the backdrop to this sophisticated and compelling debut novel. Birdy and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists in the civil rights movement in 1970s Boston. The sisters are so close that they have created a private language, yet to the outside world, they can't be sisters: Birdie appears to be white, while Cole is dark enough to fit in with the other kids at the Afrocentric school they attend. But then their parents' marriage falls apart, the girls are separated, and Birdie and her mother must assume a new and perplexing identity. Inspired by Senna's own life, Caucasia raises questions of biracialism that contribute to the poignancy, realistic complexity, and nuance intrinsic to the novel.
In the summer of 1946, in a small town in the deep South, the cruelty of racism abruptly changes the life of a 14-year-old boy. Ansel, the white son of the town storekeeper, has always been best friends with Willie, who is African American, despite the common prejudice against "niggers." Ansel has a crush on alluring Mary Susan, the preacher's daughter who knows the power of her ripening body, but so does Zeph, the nasty son of the man who owns much of the town. When Willie's father, shell-shocked in the war, runs out of the church to say he's just found Mary Susan stabbed to death, and that he saw Zeph do it, Ansel and his father rush to the scene. They find Zeph covered in blood, holding a knife—and accusing Willie's father of the crime. Ansel's father, fearful of town vengeance, insists to his son they "didn't see a damn thing." And so Willie's father is lynched, with Ansel in the crowd. And while Ansel understands that telling the truth would not have saved the man, he can't forgive himself for keeping quiet, even when he leaves for school in Massachusetts, grows up and becomes a lawyer.
Crowe, Chris. Mississippi Trial, 1955. Penguin Group . 2003. ISBN-13: 9780142501924 870L
At first Hiram is excited to visit his hometown in Mississippi. But soon after he arrives, he crosses paths with Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago who is also visiting for the summer, and Hiram sees firsthand how the local whites mistreat blacks who refuse to "know their place." When Emmett's tortured dead body is found floating in a river, Hiram is determined to find out who could do such a thing. But what will it cost him to know? Mississippi Trial, 1955 is a gripping read, based on true events that helped spark the Civil Rights Movement.
Draper, Sharon M. Fire from the Rock. Penguin Group. 2008. ISBN-13: 9780142411995
Sylvia is shocked and confused when she is asked to be one of the first black students to attend Central High School, which is scheduled to be integrated in the fall of 1957, whether people like it or not. Before Sylvia makes her final decision, smoldering racial tension in the town ignites into flame. When the smoke clears, she sees clearly that nothing is going to stop the change from coming. It is up to her generation to make it happen, in as many different ways as there are colors in the world.
Roberts, Gene. The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 2008. ISBN-13: 9780307455949 eBook
Faced with "a flying wedge of white toughs coming at him" as he interviewed a black woman after the 1955 Emmett Till lynching trial, NBC reporter John Chancellor thrust his microphone toward them, saying, "I don't care what you're going to do to me, but the whole world is going to know it." This gripping account of how America and the world found out about the Civil Rights movement is written by two veteran journalists of the "race beat" from 1954 to 1965. Building on an exhaustive base of interviews, oral histories and memoirs, news stories and editorials, they reveal how prescient Gunnar Myrdal was in asserting that "to get publicity is of the highest strategic importance to the Negro people." The New York Times and other major media take center stage, but the authors provide a fresh account of the black press's trajectory from a time when black reporters searched "for stories white reporters didn't even know about" through the loss of the black press's "eyewitness position on the story" in Little Rock to its recovery with the Freedom Rides.
Senna, Danzy. Caucasia. Penguin Group. 2003. ISBN-13: 9781573227162
Pitch-perfect period details and a superbly empathic protagonist -- upon whose body racial dissonance is literally played out -- form the backdrop to this sophisticated and compelling debut novel. Birdy and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists in the civil rights movement in 1970s Boston. The sisters are so close that they have created a private language, yet to the outside world, they can't be sisters: Birdie appears to be white, while Cole is dark enough to fit in with the other kids at the Afrocentric school they attend. But then their parents' marriage falls apart, the girls are separated, and Birdie and her mother must assume a new and perplexing identity. Inspired by Senna's own life, Caucasia raises questions of biracialism that contribute to the poignancy, realistic complexity, and nuance intrinsic to the novel.