An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America (HarperCollins, 1996)
An eyewitness account and memoir from Andrew Young, a young lieutenant of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Young went on to become a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and Mayor of Atlanta.

Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution (Simon & Schuster, 2001)
Journalist Diane McWhorter's Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Civil Rights Movement in her native Alabama.

Deep in Our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement (University of Georgia Press, 2000)
Recollections from nine white women active in civil rights. Edited by Constance Curry.

Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 (Viking Press, 1987)
Juan Williams, senior correspondent for National Public Radio, created this bestselling civil rights chronicle in collaboration with producers of the award-winning PBS series of the same name.

Fight against Fear: Southern Jews and Black Civil Rights (University of Georgia Press, 2001)
Historian Clive Webb on black-Jewish relations in the South.

Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970 (Scribner, 2001)
Lynne Olson's comprehensive look at the central role of women in the struggle for civil rights.

Going South: Jewish Women in the Civil Rights Movement (New York University Press, 2002)
Blending research and oral histories, feminist historian Debra L. Schultz reveals the complex and dangerous part played by Northern Jewish women.

In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Harvard University Press, 1995)
Stanford History professor Clayborne Carson records the history of the youth wing of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement (Arbor House, 1985)
A personal account by James Farmer, the founder of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), who organized sit-ins as early as 1943 and became one of the architects of the 1960s protests.

Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (University of Illinois Press, 1994)
Using historical records, newspaper clippings, and interviews with dozens of Mississippi residents and activists on both sides of segregation, historian John Dittmer chronicles the explosive events in Mississippi from the end of World War II to 1968: Freedom Rides, voter registration drives, Ole Miss riots, the murder of Medgar Evers, and more.

My Soul Is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered (Putnam, 1977)
Former New York Times executive editor and Alabama native Howell Raines weaves dozens of oral histories into one compelling chronicle.

My Soul Looks Back in Wonder: Voices of the Civil Rights Experience (Sterling, 2004)
This book by journalist Juan Williams showcases stories of personal transformation that bring a pivotal moment in American history vividly alive. The powerful words and intimate experiences that unfold on every page reveal just how much the civil rights revolution remains a vital force today.

Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 (Simon & Schuster, 1988) and Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65 (Simon & Schuster, 1999)
Journalist Taylor Branch's epic history of America during the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Parting the Waters won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize in history.

Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope, and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed a Nation (Zondervan, 1995, 2000) by Rosa Parks with Gregory J. Reed
The memoir from the 42-year-old seamstress whose refusal to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, helped change the nation and earned her the title "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement."

Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South (New Press, 2003)
The second installment in the New Press' series on African Americans. The book and companion CD, using hundreds of oral histories to capture the indignities and dangers of growing up black in the South, offer a chilling prequel to the Civil Rights Movement. (Based on "Behind the Veil," Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies oral history project.)

Sisters in the Struggle: African-American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement (New York: University Press, 2001)
Editors Bettye Collier-Thomas and V.P. Franklin use essays, personal testimonies, and historical analyses to document the role of black women.

States' Laws on Race and Color: Studies in the Legal History of the South (University of Georgia Press, 1997)
Pauli Murray's detailed compilation of the 1950s-era laws that mandated racial segregation.

The Children (Random House, 1998)
Journalist and author David Halberstam goes back in time to the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement in Nashville, Tennessee, and traces the lives of individuals who initiated it.

This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer (EP Dutton, 1993)
Journalist Kay Mills' account of Fannie Lou Hamer's journey from illiterate sharecropper to leader of Mississippi's Freedom Democratic Party.

Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (Knopf, 1998)
A definitive dissection of the Jim Crow era by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Leon Litwack.

Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s Through the 1980s (Bantam Books, 1990)
This companion to the acclaimed PBS documentary series Eyes on the Prize tells the civil rights story through first-person accounts from victims, activists, politicians, reporters, Justice Department officials, and others.

Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (Simon & Schuster, 1998; Harvest Books, 1999)
A young John Lewis was at the very center of the black struggle for civil rights. With journalist Michael D' Orso, Lewis takes us on his incredible journey from being a sharecropper's son to participating in Nashville lunch counter sit-ins, Mississippi Freedom Rides, the Selma to Montgomery March, the 1963 March on Washington, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the U.S. House of Representatives.

Why We Can't Wait (New American Library, 2000 reissue)
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, examination of the struggle for civil rights, with a look forward at what future generations must do to gain equality.