You’re familiar with the three R’s, but civil rights books can be categorized in terms of the three L’s: leaders, legal and local. Here are three books in each category.
The Dream: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Speech That Inspired a Nation
By Drew D. Hansen
The best book in more than a decade on the movement’s best-known leader.
Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin
By John D’Emilio
A recent biography of the gay African-American strategist who boosted Martin Luther King Jr.’s ascent and also organized the famous 1963 March on Washington.
A Fire You Can’t Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham’s Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth
By Andrew M. Manis
A spiritually insightful portrait of one of the movement’s crucial but less-heralded leaders.
Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality
By Richard Kluger
One of the finest history books ever written.
Along Freedom Road: Hyde County, North Carolina, and the Fate of Black Schools in the South
By David S. Cecelski
An instructive account of how school integration was not always a blessing for Southern black communities.
Hiring the Black Worker: The Racial Integration of the Southern Textile Industry, 1960-1980
By Timothy J. Minchin
A pioneering examination of what workplace desegregation really amounted to at the blue-collar level.
I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle
By Charles M. Payne
The most insightful and essential book yet written about local, grass-roots Southern activism.
Race & Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972
By Adam Fairclough
An impressive history that underscores how Southern black protest long predated the 1954-1968 era.
Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma
By J. Mills Thornton III
A comprehensive study of three Alabama cities, and the single most important political interpretation of local protest struggles.
