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Teaching About the Civil Rights Movement: Oral Histories and Primary Documents

This is a sampling of the vast print resources available on the Civil Rights and related movements for social justice as detailed in Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching (Washington, D.C.: Teaching for Change, 2004).

Visit Teaching for Change's Civil Rights Teaching website for more resources.

500 A~nos del Pueblo Chicano =: 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures (Paperback)

By Elizabeth Martinez

$16.00

ISBN-13: 9780963112309
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Southwest Organizing Project, 12/1991

DESCRIPTION: This classic photographic history of the Chicano people includes over 300 photos.

500 Years of Chicana Women's History/500 Anos de La Mujer Chicana (Paperback)

By Elizabeth Martinez

$27.45

ISBN-13: 9780813542249
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Rutgers University Press, 2/2008

DESCRIPTION: A picture book for grown-ups (and high school students) that you just can't put down. So many inspiring stories and photos of Mexican-American/Chicana women in politics, labor, art, health, and more. Organized thematically and geographically.

The Black Panthers Speak (Paperback)

By Philip S. Foner

This title is out of print or has limited availability. Email for information.
ISBN-13: 9780306812019
Availability: Out of Print
Published: Da Capo Press, 8/2002

DESCRIPTION: The first and still the most accessible single source of original material on the Black Panther Party with cartoons, flyers, Panther paper articles, and essays.

Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents (Paperback)

By Waldo E. Martin, Jr.

$20.08

ISBN-13: 9780312111526
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Bedford/St. Martin's, 4/1998

DESCRIPTION: Offering complete or near complete versions of relevant legal briefs and court decisions, this book provides a solid social history brought to life by newspaper editorials, political cartoons, and other materials from the Brown decision era. (Teaching Tolerance)

A Constant Struggle: African-American History 1865-Present (Paperback)

By Yohuru Rashied Williams

$84.95

ISBN-13: 9780757517594
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1/2005

DESCRIPTION: The textbook, which is in use at universities, is a compilation of essays and documents relating to African-American history topics, including three essays written by Dr. Williams (Delaware State University)

Daybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott (Paperback)

By Stewart Burns

$35.15

ISBN-13: 9780807846612
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: University of North Carolina Press, 10/1997

Other Editions of this Title

DESCRIPTION: More than 100 original documents are woven together to provide a riveting account of the boycott.

The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader: Documents, Speeches, and Firsthand Accounts from the Black Freedom Struggle (Paperback)

By Clayborne Carson, David J. Garrow, Gerald Gill

$22.00

ISBN-13: 9780140154030
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Penguin (Non-Classics), 11/1991

DESCRIPTION: This book is a collection of over 100 court decisions, speeches, interviews, and other documents on the Civil Rights Movement from 1954 to 1990. Included in the collection are the Brown v. Board of Education decision of the Supreme Court that declared legally segregated schools to be unconstitutional, Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham City Jail, Harold Washington’s inaugural speech after being elected mayor of Chicago, and the speech delivered by Nelson Mandela in Atlanta in June 1990. (Library Journal)

Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC (Hardcover)

By Faith S. Holsaert, Martha Prescod Norman Noonan, Judy Richardson

$31.46

ISBN-13: 9780252035579
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: University of Illinois Press, 9/2010

DESCRIPTION: 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.

Letters from Mississippi: Reports from Civil Rights Volunteers and Freedom School Poetry of the 1964 Freedom Summer (Hardcover)

By Elizabeth Martinez, Julian Bond

$16.95

ISBN-13: 9780939010929
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Zephyr Press (AZ), 5/2007

DESCRIPTION: A collection of letters written to family and friends by more than 150 of the volunteers in the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project. An invaluable resource for bringing that watershed summer to life for middle school through adult readers.

My Soul Is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered (Paperback)

By Howell Raines

$17.00

ISBN-13: 9780140067538
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Penguin (Non-Classics), 9/1983

Other Editions of this Title

DESCRIPTION: Collection of personal statements and reminisces of Movement activists and leaders from Montgomery Bus Boycott through King’s assassination.

My Soul Looks Back in Wonder: Voices of the Civil Rights Experience (Hardcover)

By Juan Williams, David Halberstam, Marian Wright Edelman

This title is out of print or has limited availability. Email for information.
ISBN-13: 9781402714153
Availability: Out of Print
Published: AARP, 5/2004

Other Editions of this Title

DESCRIPTION: Deeply personal in tone, My Soul Looks Back in Wonder presents stirring, thought-provoking, eyewitness accounts from people who played active roles in the civil rights movement over the past 50 years. All the narratives are drawn from AARP’s Voices of Civil Rights project…. It isn’t just about the past; although the terrible age of segregation is covered, the powerful words and intimate experiences that unfold on every page reveal just how much the civil rights revolution remains a vital force today. Every speaker makes clear that the struggle for equality must continue now, and into the future.

Oh, Freedom! (Paperback)

By Linda Barrett Osborne, Casey King

$12.95

ISBN-13: 9780679890058
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Knopf Books for Young Readers, 12/1997

Other Editions of this Title

DESCRIPTION: A unique collection of oral histories about the Civil Rights Movement that grew out of a fourth-grade assignment. The interviews, all conducted by children, are organized into three sections: “Life Under Segregation,” “The Movement to End Legalized Segregation,” and “The Struggle to End Poverty and Discrimination.” (School Library Journal) ES/MS

Reporting Civil Rights, Part One: American Journalism 1941-1963 (Hardcover)

By Clayborne Carson, David J. Garrow, Bill Kovach

$40.00

ISBN-13: 9781931082280
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Library of America, 1/2003

Other Editions of this Title

DESCRIPTION: A two-volume set that covers, through actual newspaper and magazine accounts of the era, the entire struggle for civil rights in the United States. Part One: American Journalism 1941-1963 captures the Brown decision, while Part Two: American Journalism 1963-1973 covers many of the struggles associated with integration. A companion website

Reporting Civil Rights, Part Two: American Journalism 1963-1973 (Hardcover)

By Various, Clayborne Carson

$40.00

ISBN-13: 9781931082297
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Library of America, 1/2003

Other Editions of this Title

Selma, Lord, Selma: Girlhood Memories of the Civil Rights Days (Paperback)

By Sheyann Webb-Christburg, Rachel West Nelson, Frank Sikora

$16.95

ISBN-13: 9780817308988
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: University Alabama Press, 4/1997

Other Editions of this Title

DESCRIPTION: Sheyann Webb was eight years old and Rachel West was nine when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. arrived in Selma, Alabama, on January 2, 1965, to organize peaceful demonstrations to protest discriminatory voting laws. Selma, Lord, Selma is their firsthand account of the events of that turbulent winter of 1965 -— events that changed the lives of all Alabamians and all Americans. From 1975 to 1979 journalist Frank Sikora conducted interviews with the two young women and wove their recollections into this poignant story of fear and courage, heartbreak, and determination. (University of Alabama Press) ES/MS

Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson (Paperback)

By George Jackson, Jean Genet, Jr. Jackson, Jonathan

$16.95

ISBN-13: 9781556522307
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Lawrence Hill Books, 9/1994

Other Editions of this Title

DESCRIPTION: Jackson gained notoriety shortly before his death in 1970 when his younger brother unsuccessfully tried to free him at gunpoint when Jackson and two others were on trial for killing a guard. Written between 1964 and 1970 while serving time in Soledad Prison for robbery, the letters reveal the brutality and racism faced by prisoners and call for unity among African Americans. (Library Journal)

Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s Through the 1980s (Paperback)

By Henry Hampton, Steve Fayer

$24.00

ISBN-13: 9780553352320
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Bantam, 2/1991

Other Editions of this Title

DESCRIPTION: The book is organized in 31 chapters around key events, with demonstrators offering complementary perspectives. We hear from ordinary people along with well-known activists Ralph Abernathy, Rosa Parks, Jesse Jackson, and Stokely Carmichael; public officials John Conyers and Nicholas Katzenbach; Black Panthers Huey Newton and Bobby Seale; Alex Haley, Coretta Scott King, Ossie Davis, Tom Hayden, Michael Harrington, and Harry Belafonte. Collectively the testimonies reveal how far America has progressed in the drive for equality and how far it still has to go. (Publishers Weekly)