Civil Rights Movement and Anti-Racism Resources
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Additional Resources
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Weary Feet, Rested Souls
by Townsend Davis
Arranged by location, Weary Feet, Rested Souls describes each place we will visit, including maps, Civil Rights history, photos and quotes. Provides a good preliminary review of the significance of each site, and a good tool for remembering the sites and telling others about them back home. We will be telling you which pages describe each day’s itinerary.
To link the sites on our tour with the history, we recommend that you search out a copy of the following book and bring it along on the trip.
Arranged by location, Weary Feet, Rested Souls describes each place we will visit, including maps, Civil Rights history, photos and quotes. Provides a good preliminary review of the significance of each site, and a good tool for remembering the sites and telling others about them back home. We will be telling you which pages describe each day’s itinerary.
To link the sites on our tour with the history, we recommend that you search out a copy of the following book and bring it along on the trip.
Current reading about racism
Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race
by Debbie Irving
Waking Up White is the book Irving wishes someone had handed her decades ago. By sharing her sometimes cringe-worthy struggle to understand racism and racial tensions, she offers a fresh perspective on bias, stereotypes, manners, and tolerance. As Irving unpacks her own long-held beliefs about colorblindness, being a good person, and wanting to help people of color, she reveals how each of these well-intentioned mindsets actually perpetuated her ill-conceived ideas about race. She also explains why and how she's changed the way she talks about racism, works in racially mixed groups, and understands the antiracism movement as a whole. Exercises at the end of each chapter prompt readers to explore their own racialized ideas. Waking Up White's personal narrative is designed to work well as a rapid read, a book group book, or support reading for courses exploring racial and cultural issues. |
Between the World and Me
by Ta-Nehisi Coates In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward. |
The New Jim Crow
by Michelle Alexander Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness. In the words of Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, this book is a "call to action." |
Why the Vote Wasn't Enough For Selma
In Why the Vote Wasn't Enough for Selma, Karlyn Forner rewrites the heralded story of Selma to explain why gaining the right to vote did not bring about economic justice for African Americans in the Alabama Black Belt. Drawing on a rich array of sources, Forner illustrates how voting rights failed to offset decades of systematic disfranchisement and unequal investment in African American communities. Forner contextualizes Selma as a place, not a moment within the civil rights movement —a place where black citizens' fight for full citizenship unfolded alongside an agricultural shift from cotton farming to cattle raising, the implementation of federal divestment policies, and economic globalization. At the end of the twentieth century, Selma's celebrated political legacy looked worlds apart from the dismal economic realities of the region. Forner demonstrates that voting rights are only part of the story in the black freedom struggle and that economic justice is central to achieving full citizenship.
Books of interest to Unitarian Universalists about the civil rights struggle
Call to Selma: Eighteen Days of Witness
by Richard D. Leonard
In 1965 Rev. Martin Luther King appealed to clergy across the nation to come to Selma, Alabama, and join protestors in their struggle for voting rights. Reverend Richard Leonard, age 37, was Minister of Education at the Community Church of New York at the time he answered Dr. King's call. Leonard's journal, along with the recollections of others who shared the journey, presents Selma as a pivotal point in the advancement of civil rights. |
Southern Witness
By Gordon D. Gibson At last, here is the largely untold history of Unitarian and Universalist involvement in the civil rights movement in the South. Covering congregations in nearly thirty cities and towns and spanning ten Southern states, this extensive study sheds new light on the often heroic efforts of laypeople and clergy in confronting segregation. Author Gordon Gibson witnessed some of this history firsthand, as the only UU minister in Mississippi between 1969 and 1984. His interviews with dozens of other activists from the 1950s and 60s has produced many stories, some never before recorded. We learn about Rev. Donald Thompson, shot in the back and run out of town by segregationists in Jackson, Mississippi; Rev. Albert D’Orlando, whose parsonage and church building in New Orleans were firebombed by the KKK; Robert Williams, the Black Power pioneer and radical, and many more. Southern Witness explores institutional history as well, revealing patterns in the way these congregations faced the challenges of racial injustice—patterns deeply influenced by the fellowship movement, which planted scores of small, lay-led congregations in that area. Many Southern UUs were radicalized by the movement. These pages tell their tales, as well as the sadder accounts of some who resisted change. |
The Selma Awakening: How the Civil Rights Movement Tested and Changed Unitarian Universalism
By Mark D. Morrison-Reed The foremost scholar of African-American Unitarian Universalist history presents this long-awaited analysis of the denomination's civil rights activism in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. Selma represented a turning point for Unitarian Universalists. In answering Martin Luther King Jr.'s call to action, they shifted from passing earnest resolutions about racial justice to putting their lives on the line for the cause. Morrison-Reed traces the long history of race relations among the Unitarians and the Universalists leading up to 1965, exploring events and practices of the late nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century. He reveals the disparity between their espoused values on race and their values in practice. And yet, in 1965 their activism in Selma—involving hundreds of ministers and the violent deaths of Rev. James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo—at last put them in authentic relationship with their proclaimed beliefs. With rigorous scholarship and unflinching frankness, The Selma Awakening provides a new way of understanding Unitarian Universalist engagement with race and offers an indispensable new resource for anyone interested in UU history. |
Resistance: A Memoir of Civil Disobedience in Maricopa County
In July 2010, Unitarian Universalist and Living Legacy Project Board Member, Annette Marquis, made the hard decision to participate in the National Day of Non-compliance in Phoenix, Arizona. She went there to protest the passage of SB 1070, planning to be arrested, and spent a long night in the notorious jail run by Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Marquis reflects on what compelled her to action and what she learned about the struggles of migrants and people of color in Maricopa County and about being an ally in the fight for justice.
Read one example of how the Living Legacy Pilgrimage influences social justice action today.
Available from the UUA Bookstore in print and ebook formats.
Read one example of how the Living Legacy Pilgrimage influences social justice action today.
Available from the UUA Bookstore in print and ebook formats.
General books of interest on the civil rights movement
The March Triology
John Lewis and Andrew Aydin
Before he became a respected Congressman, John Lewis was clubbed, gassed, arrested over 40 times, and nearly killed by angry mobs and state police, all while nonviolently protesting racial discrimination. He marched side-by-side with Martin Luther King as the youngest leader of the Civil Rights Movement that would change a nation forever. Now, experience John Lewis' incredible story first-hand, brought to life in a stunning graphic novel trilogy. With co-writer Andrew Aydin and Eisner Award-winning artist Nate Powell, John Lewis' MARCH tells the story of how a poor sharecropper's son helped transform America, from a segregated schoolhouse to the 1963 March on Washington and beyond.
The Children
David Halberstam - 1998
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Best and the Brightest chronicles the history of America's civil rights movement through the lives of some of the young people--known as the "Children"--who became early revolutionaries and whose courage ...
Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement
Lynne Olson - 2001
A collection of profiles of some of the fearless, resourceful female leaders of the Civil Rights Movement documents the accomplishments of Ida Wells, who led the protest against lynching; Pauli Murray, who organized the first lunch counter sit-in ...
Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC
Faith S. Holsaert , Martha Prescod Norman Noonan - 2010
In Hands on the Freedom Plow, fifty-two women--northern and southern, young and old, urban and rural, black, white, and Latina--share their courageous personal stories of working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement. The testimonies gathered here present a sweeping personal history of SNCC: early sit-ins, voter registration campaigns, and freedom rides; the 1963 March on Washington, the Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the movements in Alabama and Maryland; and Black Power and antiwar activism.
Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement
James Farmer - 1985
The founder of CORE recounts the evolution of the civil rights movement and documents previous conditions
Making of Black Revolutionaries
James Forman - 1972
This eloquent and provocative autobiography records a day by day, sometimes hour by hour, compassionate account of the events that took place in the streets, meetings, churches, jails, and in people's hearts and minds in the 1960s civil rights ...
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63
Taylor Branch - 1989
Hailed as the most masterful story ever told of the American civil rights movement, Parting the Waters is destined to endure for generations. Moving from the fiery political baptism of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the corridors of Camelot where ...
Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement
John Lewis, Michael D'Orso - 1998
The son of an Alabama sharecropper and current U.S. Congressman shares his tale of a life in the trenches of the Civil Rights movement, vividly chronicling the numerous arrests, sit-ins, and marches that marked his political awakening in the ...
AlabamaMontgomery
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks Jeanne Theoharis - 2013 The definitive political biography of Rosa Parks examines her six decades of activism, challenging perceptions of her as an accidental actor in the civil rights movement. Montgomery Bus Boycott: Women Who Started It Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, David J. Garrow - 1987 Explains how Robinson and the Women's Political Caucus started the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1954 Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice Phillip Hoose - 2010 On March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her classmates and dismissed by community leaders. Selma Black in Selma: The Uncommon Life of J. L. Chestnut, Jr. J. L. Chestnut, Jr., Julia Cass - 2007 The only black attorney in Selma, Alabama, during 1965 recounts his participation in the civil rights movement and his fight since the 1960s against segregation and prejudice. From Selma to Sorrow: The Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo Mary Stanton - 2000 Extensive and meticulous research marks the first full-length look at the life, murder, and legacy of Viola Liuzzo, a civil rights worker murdered by the Klan in 1965, whose memory was defamed by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. UP. Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don't You Grow Weary Elizabeth Partridge - 2009 An inspiring examination of the landmark march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., this book focuses on the children who faced terrifying violence in order to walk alongside him in their fight for freedom and the ... Selma, 1965 Charles Eugene Fager - 1974 The earliest attempt to describe the 1965 Selma voting rights campaign, valuable because it was written by someone directly involved in it. Birmingham Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution Diane McWhorter - 2001 Now with a new afterword, the Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatic account of the civil rights era’s climactic battle in Birmingham as the movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., brought down the institutions of segregation. “The Year of Birmingham ... Miracle in Birmingham: A Civil Rights Memoir, 1954-1965 Edward Harris - 2004. Ed Harris, before entering the Unitarian Universalist ministry, was one of the lay people who worked mightily and at great risk for social change in Birmingham. This is his telling of some of the stories of those people in that time. While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age During the Civil Rights Movement Carolyn Maull McKinstry, Denise George - 2011 On September 15, 1963, a Klan-planted bomb went off in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Fourteen-year-old Carolyn Maull was just a few feet away when the bomb exploded, killing four of her friends in the girl's rest room she .. |
MississippiFreedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made
America a Democracy Bruce Watson - 2010 "Analyzes a critical shift in American race relations during the summer of 1964, documenting how civil rights demonstrations by hundreds of college students triggered African-American voter registries and violent uprisings that also served as the ... Freedom Summer Doug McAdam In June 1964, over one thousand volunteers--most of them white, northern college students--arrived in Mississippi to register black voters and staff "freedom schools" as part of the Freedom Summer campaign organized by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Within ten days, three of them were murdered; by the summer's end, another had died and hundreds more had endured bombings, beatings, and arrests. Less dramatically, but no less significantly, the volunteers encountered a "liberating" exposure to new lifestyles, new political ideologies, and a radically new perspective on America and on themselves... I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Charles M. Payne - 2007 "With this history of the civil rights movement focusing on Everyman-turned-hero, the commoner as crusader for justice, Payne challenges the old idea that history is the biography of great men."--Kirkus Reviews "Remarkably astute in its judgments ... God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith & Civil Rights Charles Marsh - 1997 Through five intensely personal and emotional stories, Marsh asks us to consider the civil rights movement anew and to view religion as a powerful yet protean force driving social action. Letters from Mississippi Elizabeth Sutherland Martinez - 2007 Expanded and revised edition of the 2002 Zephyr publication now including poetry from the Freedom Schools, in addition to a wide selection of letters home written by participants in the Mississippi Summer Project. Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi John Dittmer - 1994 Details the Black struggle for civil rights in Mississippi Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project Robert Moses, Charles E. Cobb - 2002 At a time when popular solutions to the educational plight of poor children of color are imposed from the outside-national standards, high-stakes tests, charismatic individual saviors-the acclaimed Algebra Project and its founder, Robert Moses ... Simeon's Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till Simeon Wright, Herb Boyd - 2011 No modern tragedy has had a greater impact on race relations in America than the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till. A 14-year-old black boy from Chicago visiting relatives in Mississippi in 1955, Till was taken from his uncle's home by two white men; several days later, his body was found in the Tallahatchie River. This grotesque crime became the catalyst for the civil rights movement. Philadelphia We Are Not Afraid: The Story of Goodman, Schwerner, And Chaney, And the Civil Rights Campaign for Mississippi Seth Cagin, Philip Dray, Philip Dray - 2006 A new edition of a classic account about the 1964 Mississippi murders of three young civil rights activists by the Ku Klux Klan is updated to include information about the recent prosecution of Edgar Ray Killen and offers insight into the roles ... Ruleville We Had Sneakers, They Had Guns: The Kids Who Fought for Civil Rights in Mississippi Tracy Sugarman - 2009 So I want to talk about racism. I want to talk about Mississippi. I want to talk about events I observed that turned into history. I want to talk about black people who didn't know white people and white people who didn't know black people but ... This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer Kay Mills, Marian Wright Edelman - 1994 The award-winning biography of black civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer. "Riveting. Provides a history that helps us to understand the choices made by so many black men and women of Hamer's generation, who somehow found the courage to join a movement in which they risked everything." --New York Times Book Review |
