Freedom Civil

White privilege. Black Lives Matter. George Floyd. When it comes to racism in America, many of us feel confused, overwhelmed, angry - and eager to know how to engage in meaningful conversations and actions surrounding such a difficult topic. In Not So Black and White, public school communicator and internationally acclaimed speaker Reggie Dabbs and pastor John Driver team up to offer a hope-filled, convicting, inspiring look at how to be anti-racist in America today.

The life story of the most controversial, volatile, misunderstood provision of the Bill of Rights. At a time of increasing gun violence in America, Waldman's book provoked a wide range of discussion. This book looks at history to provide some surprising, illuminating answers. The Amendment was written to calm public fear that the new national government would crush the state militias made up of all (white) adult men - who were required to own a gun to serve. Waldman recounts the raucous public debate that has surrounded the amendment from its inception to the present.

When civil rights leader Hosea Lorenzo Williams died in 2000, US Congressman John Lewis said of him, "Hosea Williams must be looked upon as one of the founding fathers of the new America. Through his actions, he helped liberate all of us."

In 1992, a grandmother, a teenage girl, and four children were beaten and stabbed to death in Somerville, Texas. The perpetrator set the house on fire to cover his tracks. Authorities were eager to make an arrest. Five days later, Anthony Graves was in custody. Graves, then 26 years old and without an attorney, was certain that his innocence was obvious. He did not know the victims, he had no knowledge about the crime, and he had an airtight alibi with witnesses. Yet Graves was indicted, convicted of capital murder, and sentenced to death.

Arrested in 1962 as South Africa's apartheid regime intensified its brutal campaign against political opponents, 44-year-old lawyer and African National Congress activist Nelson Mandela had no idea that he would spend the next 27 years in jail. During his 10,052 days of incarceration, Mandela wrote hundreds of letters to unyielding prison authorities, fellow activists, government officials, and, most memorably, his courageous wife, Winnie, and his five children. Now, 255 of these letters, a majority of which were previously unpublished, provide the most intimate portrait of Mandela since Long Walk to Freedom.

How can we go beyond performative allyship to creating real change in ourselves and in the world, together? In The Wake Up, Michelle MiJung Kim shares foundational principles often missing in today’s mainstream conversations around “diversity and inclusion”, inviting listeners to deep dive into the challenging and nuanced work of pursuing equity and justice, while exploring various complexities, contradictions, and conflicts inherent in our imperfect world.

In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays about landmark cases in the organization’s 100-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in - Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona - need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now.

This was a decade-long struggle that toppled a dictatorship, reshaped the nation's social fabric, and set the stage for modern Mexico. This turbulent conflict pitted revolutionary leaders like Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, and Venustiano Carranza against the oppressive regimes of Porfirio Díaz and Victoriano Huerta, leading to sweeping political and social reforms. In this concise yet comprehensive book, you'll explore the revolutionary battles, shifting alliances, and the fight for land reform that defined the era.

Kindred Creation is a call and response to dream and design better worlds rooted in African lifeways: a path to Black freedom, a love letter to Black futures, and a blueprint to intergenerational Black joy and dignity—all (and always) on Black terms. Author, organizer, and designer Aida Mariam Davis explores the historical and ongoing impacts of settler colonialism, making explicit the ways that extraction, oppression, and enslavement serve the goals of empire—not least by severing ancestral connections and disrupting profound and ancient relationships to self, nature, and community.

History, race, and politics converged in the 1960s in ways that indelibly changed America. In Justice Rising, a landmark reconsideration of Robert Kennedy’s life and legacy, Patricia Sullivan draws on government files, personal papers, and oral interviews to reveal how he grasped the moment to emerge as a transformational leader.

Hubert Humphrey was one of the great liberal leaders of postwar American politics, yet because he never made it to the Oval Office, he has been largely overlooked by biographers. Historian Arnold A. Offner has explored vast troves of archival records to recapture Humphrey's life, giving us previously unknown details of the vice president's fractious relationship with Lyndon Johnson, showing how Johnson colluded with Richard Nixon to deny Humphrey the presidency, and describing the most neglected aspect of Humphrey's career.

As white supremacy, ultra-nationalism, rabid misogyny, and anti-immigrant fervor coalesce, a new and uniquely American form of fascism looms. Could our current moment actually bring about the end of democracy in the United States? Are Americans willing to surrender their freedom and dignity, along with their ongoing struggle for equality, justice, and mutual respect in the face of the rising tide of political and ideological extremism?

Helen Lewis argues that feminism’s success is down to complicated, contradictory, imperfect women who fought each other as well as fighting for equal rights. Too many of these pioneers have been whitewashed or forgotten in our modern search for feel-good, inspirational heroines. It’s time to reclaim the history of feminism as a history of difficult women.

What happens after he leaves the military? Cade Chase doesn’t have the answer. He winds up in Rockledge, a poor town in Appalachia. While helping an octogenarian benefactor, he encounters what could be a threat from squatters bedded down in forestland near his property. Turns out the more direct threat comes from brutish men who attack those squatters near his friend’s home. Two attacks on the campers propel Cade into action. With a stunning lady lawyer at his side, Cade quickly learns that the obvious problem is actually the lesser problem. Bringing to justice the people who murdered ...

On February 18, 1965, an overflowing crowd packed the Cambridge Union in Cambridge, England, to witness a historic televised debate between James Baldwin, the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, and William F. Buckley Jr., a fierce critic of the movement and America's most influential conservative intellectual. The topic was "the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro", and no one who has seen the debate can soon forget it. Nicholas Buccola's The Fire Is upon Us is the first book to tell the full story of the event.

In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for nine dollars an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough and wrote an exposé about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award. In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War.

Best-selling author Mark Lane, the first to question the investigation into the murder of President John F. Kennedy, and activist and author Dick Gregory combine their unique perspectives in a look at the assassination of Martin Luther King. James Earl Ray’s guilty plea allowed the government to sidestep a trial, and yet his hearing, conducted without any challenge by a defense attorney, raised many questions. In Murder in Memphis, Lane and Gregory examine these questions and more.

The Good Ally is an urgent call to arms to become better allies against racism and provides a thoughtful approach, centring collective healing, to do so. It is a book for those against persistent racial injustice, hungry to expand their knowledge and understanding of systemic racism in Britain and beyond. It uncovers the roots of racism and its birthplace, anti-Blackness.

When the government disappears someone she loves, rescue is the only option. Estelle won the right to a simpler life at the edge of bright glittering New City. She is a celebrity dissident, tolerated by the Congloms, acclaimed by the youth of the city, and living the life of her dreams. Parties, pretty clothes, William, it’s all good. Or is it? Maybe it’s all a facade. Safe from a distance. And probably can’t last. Because the government won’t let her win. And when someone she loves disappears, Estelle fully learns the heavy cost of her defiance. An exciting and dramatic coming of ...

Why have White supremacists and Black activists been so focused on Black mobility? From Plessy v. Ferguson to #DrivingWhileBlack, African Americans have fought for over a century to move freely around the United States. Curious as to why so many cases contesting the doctrine of "separate but equal" involved trains and buses, Mia Bay went back to the sources with some basic questions: How did travel segregation begin?