Bates, Daisy. The Long Shadow of Little Rock: A Memoir. New York: David McKay Company, Inc. 1962. 234 pages.
Readable first-person of the personal struggles, courage and commitment by Mrs. Bates, her husband and the students at Central High School during the 1957-1958 school year. Excellent for students to read.
Fairclough, Adam. To Redeem the Soul of America. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press. 1987. 503 pages.
Takes the Civil Rights Movement from the origins of the SCLC to the “Abernathy years” in the 1980’s. Well-documented and scholarly, with almost seventy pages of notes and footnotes and over ten pages of chronology at the end of the book.
Friedman, Leon, ed. The Civil Rights Reader. Basic Documents of the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Walker and Company. 1967. 348 pages.
Begins with the 1947 Civil Rights Committee’s Report to the President and ends with the 1966 Civil Rights Bill, with excerpts from Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Stokely Carmichael and others. An essential part of a serious treatment of this era.
Goldman, Peter. Civil Rights: The Challenge of the Fourteenth Amendment. New York: Conrad-McCann, Inc. 1965. 120 pages.
Written for the junior-high school student, full of pictures and chapter titles such as “The Schools: Separate Isn’t Equal,” and “The Students: Sit-ins and Freedom Rides.” Includes the music and all eight verses of “We Shall Overcome.” Portrays events up to and including the Selma to Montgomery March in 1964.
Harkey, Ira. The Smell of Burning Crosses. Jacksonville, Illinois: Harris-Wolfe and Company. 1967. 208 pages.
Personal autobiography of Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Ira Harkey. A story of personal courage in racist Mississippi against the racist society and the Klan.
Holt, Len. The Summer That Didn’t End. New York: William Morrow and Company. 1965. 351 pages.
An in-depth description of “Freedom Summer” in 1964 and the Democratic National Convention. Over forty pages of Appendices and Documents at the end of the book, including a list of incidents of violence in Mississippi in 1964, and student work from the Freedom Schools.
Huie, William B. Three Lives For Mississippi, New York: WCC Books. 1965. 254 pages.
Written in 1965 by a native Mississippian, it documents the events surrounding the missing civil rights workers, Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner. Sixteen pages of photos. High-interest reading level for students.
Lewis, Anthony and the New York Times. Portrait of a Decade. The Second American Revolution. New York: Random House. 1964. 322 pages.
Authoritatively written and well-researched. A good overview of the decade, 1955 to 1965. Has an excellent chapter entitled, “The North,” and another, “The Law.”
Schulke, Flip, ed. Martin Luther King, Jr. A Documentary: Montgomery to Memphis. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc. 1975. 224 pages.
Dozens of excellent, large black and white photographs, convey the message as only visual images can. A wonderful resource to use in the classroom. Includes all of King’s major speeches and letters.
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Staff Reports. Civil Rights U.S.A., Public Schools, Southern States, 1962. New York: Greenwood Press Publishers. 1962. 217 pages.
How Southern school districts in four states responded to the desegregation decrees, each with a Summary, and community progress charts.
von Hoffman, Nicholas. Mississippi Notebook. New York: David White Company. 1964. 117 pages.
A personal account, with over thirty pages of photographs, of the people’s struggles during Freedom Summer, 1964. High-interest reading for students.
Whitfield, Stephen J. A Death in the Delta. The Story of Emmett Till. New York: Macmillan, Inc. 1988. 193 pages.
Fascinating detailed account of the Till case, and the conditions that promoted such a crime. Focuses on the theme of race and sex in the Southern culture. Literary as well as historical.
Williams, Juan. Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965. New York: Viking Penguin, Inc. 1987. 300 pages.
A companion to the film series. Filled with helpful anecdotes, stories, personal biographies and illustrations that proved invaluable to my unit.