Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC's Dream for  a New America

by Wesley C. Hogan

The following is an excerpt chosen by Karen from the book: 

Sweat beaded on twenty-one year old Charles McLaurin's forehead as he opened the car door and got out.  His stomach felt weak, his  knees unsure. What he call "the fear" was upon him.  A handsome broad-shouldered man from Jackson, he stood up as three elderly women emerged from the back seat and started toward the courthouse on a hot August day in 
1962.  He stopped behind them, watching the pride with which they moved, the strong convictions that they held, "as if this was the long walk that led to the Golden Gate of Heaven, their heads held high."  Earlier in the car, the  women had told stories of the years gone by while McLaurin drove "with knees  shaking, mouth closed tightly so as to not let them hear the fear in my voice."  When they passed through Sunflower , Mississippi, one of the women said, "Won't be long now."  McLaurin's heart jumped, realizing what danger could lie ahead for us, especially me."  The women, whose ages ranged from sixty-five to eighty-five, "knew the white man and his ways, they knew him because they had lived with him, and worked for him".  At the courthouse in Indianola, McLaurin stayed by the car as each woman walked up to the white registrar and said, "I want to vote."
  
     McLaurin's peak moment [in the movement my addition] occurred when these three elderly ladies had acted in a way that gave him the "spirit to continue". He recognized the existence of a "slavery mentality" that kept people from registering, and he had learned in the movement that it was not just a black problem, but a human problem. It was a problem of submission- people are helpless when young and learn subservience to survive. The women McLaurin drove to the courthouse found a way to rise above this submission and attempted to reside in the world as free persons. So this is why McLaurin remembered that day in 1962. He fixed in his mind how to live.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

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."

SNCC: The New Abolitionists

by Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn tells the story of one of the most important political groups in American history. SNCC: The New Abolitionists influenced a generation of  activists struggling for civil rights and seeking to learn from the successes and failures of those who built the fantastically influential Student Nonviolent  Coordinating Committee. It is considered an indispensable study of the  organization, of the 1960s, and of the process of social change.

From the Mississippi Delta: A Memoir

by Endesha Ida Mae Holland, Ph.D.

Born in Greenwood, Mississippi, the heart of the Mississippi Delta, Endesha Ida  Mae Holland came of age as the civil rights movement was changing the lives of  black Mississippians. Dirt poor, she dropped out of high school and became a  prostitute when she was barely into her teens. By the time she was
18 years old,  Holland had served two terms in the county workhouse for theft and for assault.  A chance encounter led her to become involved with the Student Nonviolent  Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and she became an activist and organizer, taking  a new path that eventually led her to the University of Minnesota, where she  earned a doctorate and became a college professor. From the Mississippi Delta is a gritty, inspiring memoir.

This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer

by Kay Mills with a foreword by Marian Wright Edelman

The award-winning biography of black civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer.

Ella Baker: Freedom Bound
by Joanne Grant

Shining a guiding light on the path to
freedom, Ella J.  Baker stood at the forefront of the great struggle for civil rights. The  battles she fought, the organizations she helped build, the prominent leaders  she worked with, shoulder to shoulder - all these make her story a history  of the movement itself. In Ella Baker Joanne Grant gives us the first full  portrait of the incomparable Ella Baker. Although she shunned the spotlight, believing the glare of the media more a hindrance than a help to her work, Miss Baker, as she was known to all, nonetheless found herself center stage in the struggle for civil rights. Throughout the nineteen forties, fifties, and into the sixties, she fought to desegregate the schools, to increase voter registration, and to encourage participation of African Americans in electoral politics. Above all, she strove to get people everywhere more involved in the decisions that affected their own lives. In addition to her position as a national officer of the NAACP, Baker helped
found Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In a political world dominated by men, there were those  who did not always know what to make of
this driven, feisty, intensely focused woman. Her unceasing efforts brought
her into conflict with Martin Luther King Jr. himself.