29 Best Civil Rights Books
Civil Rights is a popular category for many book lovers. Our team at Speechify has curated a list of the top Civil Rights audiobooks everyone must read.
See the top 29 Civil Rights audiobooks below.
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America’s Disenfranchised
- By: Desmond Meade
- Narrator: Dion Graham
- Length: 1 hours 37 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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5(2 ratings)
5(2 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0014.95 USDVoting is foundational in a democracy, yet over six million American citizens remain stripped of their ability to participate in elections. Once convicted of a felony, people who complete their sentences reenter society, but no longer with the civilVoting is foundational in a democracy, yet over six million American citizens remain stripped of their ability to participate in elections. Once convicted of a felony, people who complete their sentences reenter society, but no longer with the civil rights they once had. They may return to school, secure employment to provide for their families, and become law-abiding, tax-paying citizens–sometimes for decades–and still be denied the voting rights afforded to every other citizen.
Desmond Meade, director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition and a returning citizen himself, played an instrumental role in the landslide 2018 Amendment 4 victory in Florida, which used the ballot box to restore voting rights to 1.4 million Floridians with a previous felony conviction. Meade argues how, state by state, America can do better. His efforts in Florida present a compelling argument that creating access to democracy for those living on the fringes of society will create a more vibrant and robust democracy for all. He is the winner of the 2021 Brown Democracy Medal for his continuing work to restore voting rights and connect Americans along shared social values.
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American Crusade
- By: Andrew L. Seidel
- Narrator: Andrew L. Seidel
- Length: 11 hours 21 minutes
- Publisher: Union Square & Co. Audio
- Publish date: September 27, 2022
- Language: English
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4.6(139 ratings)
4.6(139 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDIs a fight against equality and for privilege a fight for religious supremacy? A constitutional attorney dives into the debate on religious liberty, the modern attempt to weaponize religious freedom, and the Supreme Court’s role in thatIs a fight against equality and for privilege a fight for religious supremacy? A constitutional attorney dives into the debate on religious liberty, the modern attempt to weaponize religious freedom, and the Supreme Court’s role in that “crusade.”
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Critically acclaimed author and constitutional attorney Andrew L. Seidel looks at some of the key Supreme Court cases of the last thirty years–including Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (a bakery can deny making a wedding cake for a gay couple), Trump v. Hawaii (the anti-Muslim travel ban case), American Legion v. American Humanist Association (related to a group maintaining a 40-foot Christian cross on government-owned land), and Tandon v. Newsom (a Santa Clara Bible group exempted from Covid health restrictions)–and how a hallowed legal protection, freedom of religion, has been turned into a tool to advance privilege and impose religion on others. The book will include a foreword by noted constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky. -
The Wake Up
- By: Michelle MiJung Kim
- Narrator: Michelle MiJung Kim
- Length: 10 hours 35 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: September 28, 2021
- Language: English
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4.58(346 ratings)
4.58(346 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.99 USDThis informative guide helps allies who want to go beyond rigid Diversity and Inclusion best practices, with real tools to go from good intentions to making meaningful change in any situation or venue. As we become more aware of various socialThis informative guide helps allies who want to go beyond rigid Diversity and Inclusion best practices, with real tools to go from good intentions to making meaningful change in any situation or venue.As we become more aware of various social injustices in the world, many of us want to be part of the movement toward positive change. But sometimes our best intentions cause unintended harm, and we fumble. We might feel afraid to say the wrong thing and feel guilt for not doing or knowing enough. Sometimes we might engage in performative allyship rather than thoughtful solidarity, leaving those already marginalized further burdened and exhausted. The feelings of fear, insecurity, inadequacy are all too common among a wide spectrum of changemakers, and they put many at a crossroads between feeling stuck and giving up, or staying grounded to keep going. So 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 readers 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. With a mix of in-the-trenches narrative and accessible unpacking of hot button issues–from inclusive language to representation to “cancel culture”–Michelle offers sustainable frameworks that guide us how to think, approach, and be in the journey as thoughtfully and powerfully as possible.
The Wake Up is divided into four key parts:- Grounding: begin by moving beyond good intentions to interrogating our deeper “why” for committing to social justice and uncovering our “hidden stories.”
- Orienting: establish a shared understanding around our historical and current context and issues we are trying to solve, starting with dismantling white supremacy.
- Showing Up: learn critical principles to approach any situation with clarity and build our capacity to work through complexity, nuance, conflict, and imperfections.
- Moving Together: remember the core of this work is about human lives, and commit to prioritizing humanity, healing, and community.
The Wake Up is an urgent call for us to move together while seeing each other’s full and expansive humanity that is at the core of our movement toward justice, healing, and freedom. -
My Fourth Time, We Drowned
- By: Sally Hayden
- Narrator: Aoife McMahon
- Length: 13 hours 59 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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4.57(276 ratings)
4.57(276 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0022.95 USDThe Western world has turned its back on migrants, leaving them to cope with one of the most devastating humanitarian crises in history. Reporter Sally Hayden was at home in London when she received a message on Facebook: “Hi sister Sally, weThe Western world has turned its back on migrants, leaving them to cope with one of the most devastating humanitarian crises in history.
Reporter Sally Hayden was at home in London when she received a message on Facebook: “Hi sister Sally, we need your help.” The sender identified himself as an Eritrean refugee who had been held in a Libyan detention center for months, locked in one big hall with hundreds of others. Now, the city around them was crumbling in a scrimmage between warring factions, and they remained stuck, defenseless, with only one remaining hope: contacting her. Hayden had inadvertently stumbled onto a human rights disaster of epic proportions.
From this single message begins a staggering account of the migrant crisis across North Africa, in a groundbreaking work of investigative journalism. With unprecedented access to people currently inside Libyan detention centers, Hayden’s book is based on interviews with hundreds of refugees and migrants who tried to reach Europe and found themselves stuck in Libya once the European Union started funding interceptions in 2017.
It is an intimate portrait of life for these detainees, as well as a condemnation of nongovernmental organizations and the United Nations, whose abdication of international standards will echo throughout history. But most importantly, My Fourth Time, We Drowned shines a light on the resilience of humans: how refugees and migrants locked up for years fall in love, support each other through the hardest times, and carry out small acts of resistance in order to survive in a system that wants them to be silent and disappear.
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What Set Me Free (The Story That Inspired the Major Motion Picture Brian Banks)
- By: Brian Banks
- Narrator: Brian Banks
- Length: 8 hours 15 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
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4.52(54 ratings)
4.52(54 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USD*The story that inspired the film Brian Banks* Discover the unforgettable and inspiring true story of a young man who was wrongfully convicted as a teenager and imprisoned for more than five years, only to emerge with his spirit unbroken and*The story that inspired the film Brian Banks*
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Discover the unforgettable and inspiring true story of a young man who was wrongfully convicted as a teenager and imprisoned for more than five years, only to emerge with his spirit unbroken and determined to achieve his dream of playing in the NFL.
At age sixteen, Brian Banks was a nationally recruited All-American Football player, ranked eleventh in the nation as a linebacker. Before his seventeenth birthday, he was in jail, awaiting trial for a heinous crime he did not commit.
Although Brian was innocent, his attorney advised him that as a young black man accused of rape, he stood no chance of winning his case at trial. Especially since he would be tried as an adult. Facing a possible sentence of forty-one years to life, Brian agreed to take a plea deal–and a judge sentenced him to six years in prison.
At first, Brian was filled with fear, rage, and anger as he reflected on the direction his life had turned and the unjust system that had imprisoned him. Brian was surrounded by darkness, until he had epiphany that would change his life forever. From that moment on, he made the choice to shed the bitterness and anger he felt, and focus only on the things he had the power to control. He approached his remaining years in prison with a newfound resolve, studying spirituality, improving his social and writing skills, and taking giant leaps on his journey toward enlightenment.
When Brian emerged from prison with five years of parole still in front of him, he was determined to rebuild his life and finally prove his innocence. Three months before his parole was set to expire, armed with a shocking recantation from his accuser and the help of the California Innocence Project, the truth about his unjust incarceration came out and he was exonerated. Finally free, Brian sought to recapture a dream once stripped away: to play for the NFL. And at age twenty-eight, he made that dream come true.
Perfect for fans of Just Mercy, I Beat the Odds, and Infinite Hope, this powerful memoir is a deep dive into the injustices of the American justice system, a soul-stirring celebration of the resilience of the human spirit, and an inspiring call to hold fast to our dreams. -
For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts
- By: Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez
- Narrator: Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez
- Length: 9 hours 16 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: September 07, 2021
- Language: English
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4.52(1520 ratings)
4.52(1520 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.99 USDThe founder of Latina Rebels and a “Latinx Activist You Should Know”(Teen Vogue) arms women of color with the tools and knowledge they need to find success on their own terms For generations, Brown girls have had to push against powerfulThe founder of Latina Rebels and a “Latinx Activist You Should Know”(Teen Vogue) arms women of color with the tools and knowledge they need to find success on their own terms
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For generations, Brown girls have had to push against powerful forces of sexism, racism, and classism, often feeling alone in the struggle. By founding Latina Rebels, Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez has created a community to help women fight together. In For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts, she offers wisdom and a liberating path forward for all women of color. She crafts powerful ways to address the challenges Brown girls face, from imposter syndrome to colorism. She empowers women to decolonize their worldview, and defy “universal” white narratives, by telling their own stories. Her book guides women of color toward a sense of pride and sisterhood and offers essential tools to energize a movement.
May it spark a fire within you. -
The Brother You Choose
- By: Susie Day
- Narrator: Kate Mulligan
- Length: 6 hours 6 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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4.5(38 ratings)
4.5(38 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDFormer Black Panthers Paul Coates and Eddie Conway discuss lives, politics, and their friendship that helped Eddie survive decades in prison. In 1971, Eddie Conway, lieutenant of security for the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party, wasFormer Black Panthers Paul Coates and Eddie Conway discuss lives, politics, and their friendship that helped Eddie survive decades in prison.
In 1971, Eddie Conway, lieutenant of security for the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party, was convicted of murdering a police officer and sentenced to life plus thirty years behind bars. Paul Coates was a community worker at the time and didn’t know Eddie well, and the little he knew, he didn’t much like. But Paul was dead certain that Eddie’s charges were bogus. He vowed never to leave Eddie–and in so doing, changed the course of both their lives.
For over forty-three years, as he raised a family and started a business, Paul visited Eddie in prison, often taking his kids with him. He and Eddie shared their lives and worked together on dozens of legal campaigns in hopes of gaining Eddie’s release. Paul’s founding of the Black Classic Press in 1978 was originally a way to get books to Eddie in prison. When, in 2014, Eddie finally walked out onto the streets of Baltimore, Paul Coates was there to greet him. Today, these two men remain rock-solid comrades and friends, each being the other’s chosen brother.When Eddie and Paul met in the Baltimore Panther Party, they were in their early twenties. They are now into their seventies. This book is a record of their lives and their relationship, told in their own voices. Paul and Eddie talk about their individual stories, their work, their politics, and their immeasurable bond.
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Justice Rising
- By: Patricia Sullivan
- Narrator: Leon Nixon
- Length: 23 hours 35 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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4.49(36 ratings)
4.49(36 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0029.95 USDA leading civil rights historian places Robert Kennedy for the first time at the center of the movement for racial justice of the 1960s–and shows how many of today’s issues can be traced back to that pivotal time. History, race, andA leading civil rights historian places Robert Kennedy for the first time at the center of the movement for racial justice of the 1960s–and shows how many of today’s issues can be traced back to that pivotal time.
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.
When protests broke out across the South, the young attorney general confronted escalating demands for racial justice. What began as a political problem soon became a moral one. In the face of vehement pushback from Southern Democrats bent on massive resistance, he put the weight of the federal government behind school desegregation and voter registration. Bobby Kennedy’s youthful energy, moral vision, and capacity to lead created a momentum for change. He helped shape the 1964 Civil Rights Act but knew no law would end racism. When the Watts uprising brought calls for more aggressive policing, he pushed back, pointing to the root causes of urban unrest: entrenched poverty, substandard schools, and few job opportunities. RFK strongly opposed the military buildup in Vietnam, but nothing was more important to him than “the revolution within our gates, the struggle of the American Negro for full equality and full freedom.”
On the night of Martin Luther King’s assassination, Kennedy’s anguished appeal captured the hopes of a turbulent decade: “In this difficult time for the United States it is perhaps well to ask what kind of nation we are and what direction we want to move in.” It is a question that remains urgent and unanswered.
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Buses Are a Comin’
- By: Charles Person
- Narrator: Landon Woodson
- Length: 10 hours 4 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish date: April 27, 2021
- Language: English
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4.48(584 ratings)
4.48(584 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0026.99 USD“Narrator Landon Woodson does a masterful job delivering Person’s audiobook–which is both Person’s own coming-of-age story and the story of a nation trying to reckon with racism…This important audiobook is shared“Narrator Landon Woodson does a masterful job delivering Person’s audiobook–which is both Person’s own coming-of-age story and the story of a nation trying to reckon with racism…This important audiobook is shared exquisitely by Woodson.” — AudioFile Magazine
A firsthand exploration of the cost of boarding the bus of change to move America forward—written by one of the Civil Rights Movement’s pioneers.At 18, Charles Person was the youngest of the original Freedom Riders, key figures in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement who left Washington, D.C. by bus in 1961, headed for New Orleans. This purposeful mix of black and white, male and female activists–including future Congressman John Lewis, Congress of Racial Equality Director James Farmer, Reverend Benjamin Elton Cox, journalist and pacifist James Peck, and CORE field secretary Genevieve Hughes–set out to discover whether America would abide by a Supreme Court decision that ruled segregation unconstitutional in bus depots, waiting areas, restaurants, and restrooms nationwide.
Two buses proceeded through Virginia, North and South Carolina, to Georgia where they were greeted by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and finally to Alabama. There, the Freedom Riders found their answer: No. Southern states would continue to disregard federal law and use violence to enforce racial segregation. One bus was burned to a shell, its riders narrowly escaping; the second, which Charles rode, was set upon by a mob that beat several riders nearly to death.
Buses Are a Comin’ provides a front-row view of the struggle to belong in America, as Charles Person accompanies his colleagues off the bus, into the station, into the mob, and into history to help defeat segregation’s violent grip on African American lives. It is also a challenge from a teenager of a previous era to the young people of today: become agents of transformation. Stand firm. Create a more just and moral country where students have a voice, youth can make a difference, and everyone belongs.A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press
“Shot through with vivid details of beatdowns, arrests, and awe-inspiring bravery, this inspirational account captures the magnitude of what the early civil rights movement was up against.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review
“A vital story, this memoir is also an instructive gift to future generations fighting for change.” — Kirkus, starred review
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Open Season
- By: Ben Crump
- Narrator: Korey Jackson
- Length: 7 hours 57 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: October 15, 2019
- Language: English
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4.45(389 ratings)
4.45(389 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0023.99 USDThe president of the National Bar Association and one of the most distinguished civil rights attorneys working today reflects on the landmark cases he has battled–including representing Trayvon Martin’s family–and offers aThe president of the National Bar Association and one of the most distinguished civil rights attorneys working today reflects on the landmark cases he has battled–including representing Trayvon Martin’s family–and offers a disturbing look at how the justice system is used to promote injustice in this memoir and clarion call as shocking and important as the bestsellers Just Mercy and Slavery by Another Name and Ava DuVernay’s film 13th.
Benjamin Crump firmly believes in the Constitution and its legal protections–that civil rights legislation covers all Americans, not just those privileged by race, wealth, or pedigree. A fierce and passionate advocate, he has devoted his career to fighting for justice for America’s marginalized. Open Season is his inspiring journey working on some of the most egregious cases that have shocked the nation, including those of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.
Shaped by his first-hand experience handling civil litigation matters in state and federal courts throughout the country, Open Season reveals the often hidden and systemic injustices minorities face, and illuminates how discrimination in the courthouse devastates real families and communities. Chronicling some of his most memorable legal battles, this brilliant litigator shockingly makes clear how our system is devised for certain people to lose and others to win, and, using evidence and facts, exposes how it is legal to harm–with the intent to destroy–people of color.
Crump offers a cogent analysis of legal tenets, including the 13th Amendment, the 1951 Genocide Petition to the United Nations, and controversial Stand Your Ground laws. He compares how race detrimentally influences sentencing, and reveals how police unions protect officers who shoot unarmed civilians. He also makes clear how budget cuts for education, the proliferation of guns, and high unemployment rates all directly contribute to higher crime rates.
America must live up to its promise to protect the rights of its citizens equally, Crump maintains. Thoughtful, well-reasoned, and powerfully persuasive, Open Season details one man’s life mission preserving the hard-won justice for all.
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Unexampled Courage
- By: Richard Gergel
- Narrator: Richard Gergel
- Length: 8 hours 38 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish date: January 22, 2019
- Language: English
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4.43(445 ratings)
4.43(445 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USD*The book that inspired the 2021 PBS American Experience documentary, The Blinding of Isaac Woodard.* This program includes an introduction read by the author. How the blinding of Sergeant Isaac Woodard changed the course of America’s civil*The book that inspired the 2021 PBS American Experience documentary, The Blinding of Isaac Woodard.*
This program includes an introduction read by the author.
How the blinding of Sergeant Isaac Woodard changed the course of America’s civil rights history.
Richard Gergel’s Unexampled Courage details the impact of the blinding of Sergeant Woodard on the racial awakening of President Truman and Judge Waring, and traces their influential roles in changing the course of America’s civil rights history.
On February 12, 1946, Sergeant Isaac Woodard, a returning, decorated African American veteran, was removed from a Greyhound bus in Batesburg, South Carolina, after he challenged the bus driver’s disrespectful treatment of him. Woodard, in uniform, was arrested by the local police chief, Lynwood Shull, and beaten and blinded while in custody.
President Harry Truman was outraged by the incident. He established the first presidential commission on civil rights and his Justice Department filed criminal charges against Shull. In July 1948, following his commission’s recommendation, Truman ordered an end to segregation in the U.S. armed forces. An all-white South Carolina jury acquitted Shull, but the presiding judge, J. Waties Waring, was conscience-stricken by the failure of the court system to do justice by the soldier. Waring described the trial as his “baptism of fire,” and began issuing major civil rights decisions from his Charleston courtroom, including his 1951 dissent in Briggs v. Elliott declaring public school segregation per se unconstitutional. Three years later, the Supreme Court adopted Waring’s language and reasoning in Brown v. Board of Education.
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The Shadow System
- By: Sylvia A. Harvey
- Narrator: Janina Edwards
- Length: 8 hours 43 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: April 07, 2020
- Language: English
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4.43(45 ratings)
4.43(45 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDFrom an award-winning journalist, a searing expose of the effects of the mass incarceration crisis on families — including the 2.7 million American children who have a parent locked up.In The Shadow System, award-winning journalist Sylvia A.From an award-winning journalist, a searing expose of the effects of the mass incarceration crisis on families — including the 2.7 million American children who have a parent locked up.In The Shadow System, award-winning journalist Sylvia A. Harvey follows the fears, challenges, and small victories of three families struggling to live within the confines of a brutal system. In Florida, a young father tries to maintain a relationship with his daughter despite a sentence of life without parole. In Kentucky, where the opioid epidemic has led to the increased incarceration of women, many of whom are white, one mother fights for custody of her children. In Mississippi, a wife steels herself for her husband’s thirty-ninth year in prison and does her best to keep their sons close.Through these stories, Harvey reveals a shadow system of laws and regulations enacted to dehumanize the incarcerated and profit off their families — from mandatory sentencing laws, to restrictions on prison visitation, to astronomical charges for brief phone calls.The Shadow System is an eye-opening account of the way incarceration has impacted generations of American families; it delivers a galvanizing clarion call to fix this broken system.... Read more -
Garvey and Garveyism
- By: Amy Jacques Garvey
- Length: 14 hours 8 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: March 01, 2022
- Language: English
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4.43(32 ratings)
4.43(32 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USDLike all great dreamers and planners, Marcus Garvey dreamed and planned ahead of his time and his peoples’ ability to understand the significance of his life’s work. A set of circumstances, mostly created by the world colonial powers,Like all great dreamers and planners, Marcus Garvey dreamed and planned ahead of his time and his peoples’ ability to understand the significance of his life’s work.
A set of circumstances, mostly created by the world colonial powers, crushed this dreamer, but not his dreams. Due to persistence and years of sacrifice of Mrs. Amy Jacques Garvey, widow of Marcus Garvey, a large body of work by and about
this great nationalist leader has been preserved and can be made available to a new generation of Black people who have the power to turn his dreams into realities.Written as a participant and confidant, Amy Jacques Garvey’s perspective continues to provide an intimate and first-person narrative of the Garvey movement and this important nascent period of Black Nationalism.
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Love Wins
- By: Debbie Cenziper
- Narrator: George Newbern
- Length: 8 hours 10 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: June 14, 2016
- Language: English
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4.42(872 ratings)
4.42(872 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.004.99 USDThe fascinating and very moving story of the lovers, lawyers, judges and activists behind the groundbreaking Supreme Court case that led to one of the most important, national civil rights victories in decades–the legalization of same-sexThe fascinating and very moving story of the lovers, lawyers, judges and activists behind the groundbreaking Supreme Court case that led to one of the most important, national civil rights victories in decades–the legalization of same-sex marriage.
In June 2015, the Supreme Court made same-sex marriage the law in all fifty states in a decision as groundbreaking as Roe v Wade and Brown v Board of Education. Through insider accounts and access to key players, this definitive account reveals the dramatic and previously unreported events behind Obergefell v Hodges and the lives at its center. This is a story of law and love–and a promise made to a dying man who wanted to know how he would be remembered.
Twenty years ago, Jim Obergefell and John Arthur fell in love in Cincinnati, Ohio, a place where gays were routinely picked up by police and fired from their jobs. In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had to provide married gay couples all the benefits offered to straight couples. Jim and John–who was dying from ALS–flew to Maryland, where same-sex marriage was legal. But back home, Ohio refused to recognize their union, or even list Jim’s name on John’s death certificate. Then they met Al Gerhardstein, a courageous attorney who had spent nearly three decades advocating for civil rights and who now saw an opening for the cause that few others had before him.
This forceful and deeply affecting narrative–Part Erin Brockovich, part Milk, part Still Alice–chronicles how this grieving man and his lawyer, against overwhelming odds, introduced the most important gay rights case in U.S. history. It is an urgent and unforgettable account that will inspire readers for many years to come.
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Our Class
- By: Chris Hedges
- Narrator: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 7 hours 8 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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4.41(293 ratings)
4.41(293 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDA powerfully moving book that “could make graspable why today’s prisons are contemporary slave plantations” (Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple), giving voice to the poorest among us and laying bare the cruelty of a penalA powerfully moving book that “could make graspable why today’s prisons are contemporary slave plantations” (Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple), giving voice to the poorest among us and laying bare the cruelty of a penal system that too often defines their lives.
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Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges has taught courses in drama, literature, philosophy, and history since 2013 in the college degree program offered by Rutgers University at East Jersey State Prison and other New Jersey prisons. In his first class at East Jersey State Prison, where students read and discussed plays by Amiri Baraka and August Wilson, among others, his class set out to write a play of their own. In writing the play, Caged, which would run for a month in 2018 to sold-out audiences at The Passage Theatre in Trenton, New Jersey, and later be published, students gave words to the grief and suffering they and their families have endured, as well as to their hopes and dreams. The class’s artistic and personal discovery, as well as transformation, is chronicled in heartbreaking detail in Our Class.
This “magnificent” (Cornel West, author of Race Matters) book gives a human face and a voice to those our society too often demonizes and abandons. It exposes the terrible crucible and injustice of America’s penal system and the struggle by those trapped within its embrace to live lives of dignity, meaning, and purpose. -
Notes of a Native Son
- By: James Baldwin
- Narrator: Ron Butler
- Length: 5 hours 3 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2015
- Language: English
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4.37(15279 ratings)
4.37(15279 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDAt last, a new audio edition of the book many have called James Baldwin’s most influential work! Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in Notes of a Native Son capture a view ofAt last, a new audio edition of the book many have called James Baldwin’s most influential work!
Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in Notes of a Native Son capture a view of black life and black thought at the dawn of the civil rights movement and as the movement slowly gained strength through the words of one of the most captivating essayists and foremost intellectuals of that era. Writing as an artist, activist, and social critic, Baldwin probes the complex condition of being black in America. With a keen eye, he examines everything from the significance of the protest novel to the motives and circumstances of the many black expatriates of the time, from his home in “The Harlem Ghetto” to a sobering “Journey to Atlanta.”
Notes of a Native Son inaugurated Baldwin as one of the leading interpreters of the dramatic social changes erupting in the United States in the twentieth century, and many of his observations have proven almost prophetic. His criticism on topics such as the paternalism of white progressives or on his own friend Richard Wright’s work is pointed and unabashed. He was also one of the few writing on race at the time who addressed the issue with a powerful mixture of outrage at the gross physical and political violence against black citizens and measured understanding of their oppressors, which helped awaken a white audience to the injustices under their noses. Naturally, this combination of brazen criticism and unconventional empathy for white readers won Baldwin as much condemnation as praise.
Notes is the book that established Baldwin’s voice as a social critic, and it remains one of his most admired works. The essays collected here create a cohesive sketch of black America and reveal an intimate portrait of Baldwin’s own search for identity as an artist, as a black man, and as an American.
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The Great Dissenter
- By: Peter S. Canellos
- Narrator: Arthur Morey
- Length: 19 hours 23 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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4.36(457 ratings)
4.36(457 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0029.99 USDThe “superb” (The Guardian) biography of an American who stood against all the forces of Gilded Age America to fight for civil rights and economic freedom: Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan.They say that history is written byThe “superb” (The Guardian) biography of an American who stood against all the forces of Gilded Age America to fight for civil rights and economic freedom: Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan.
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They say that history is written by the victors. But not in the case of the most famous dissenter on the Supreme Court. Almost a century after his death, John Marshall Harlan’s words helped end segregation and gave us our civil rights and our modern economic freedom.
But his legacy would not have been possible without the courage of Robert Harlan, a slave who John’s father raised like a son in the same household. After the Civil War, Robert emerges as a political leader. With Black people holding power in the Republican Party, it is Robert who helps John land his appointment to the Supreme Court.
At first, John is awed by his fellow justices, but the country is changing. Northern whites are prepared to take away black rights to appease the South. Giant trusts are monopolizing entire industries. Against this onslaught, the Supreme Court seemed all too willing to strip away civil rights and invalidate labor protections. So as case after case comes before the court, challenging his core values, John makes a fateful decision: He breaks with his colleagues in fundamental ways, becoming the nation’s prime defender of the rights of Black people, immigrant laborers, and people in distant lands occupied by the US.
Harlan’s dissents, particularly in Plessy v. Ferguson, were widely read and a source of hope for decades. Thurgood Marshall called Harlan’s Plessy dissent his “Bible”–and his legal roadmap to overturning segregation. In the end, Harlan’s words built the foundations for the legal revolutions of the New Deal and Civil Rights eras.
Spanning from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement and beyond, The Great Dissenter is a “magnificent” (Douglas Brinkley) and “thoroughly researched” (The New York Times) rendering of the American legal system’s most significant failures and most inspiring successes. -
Pillar of Fire
- By: Taylor Branch
- Narrator: CCH Pounder
- Length: 6 hours 47 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 1998
- Language: English
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4.35(2622 ratings)
4.35(2622 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0015.95 USDFrom Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, the second part of his epic trilogy on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the American Civil Rights Movement. In the second volume of his three-part history, a monumental trilogy that began with Parting theFrom Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, the second part of his epic trilogy on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the American Civil Rights Movement.
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In the second volume of his three-part history, a monumental trilogy that began with Parting the Waters, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Taylor Branch portrays the Civil Rights Movement at its zenith, recounting the climactic struggles as they commanded the national stage.
Beginning with the Nation of Islam and conflict over racial separatism, Pillar of Fire takes the reader to Mississippi and Alabama: Birmingham, the murder of Medgar Evers, the “March on Washington,” the Civil Rights Act, and voter registration drives. In 1964, King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Branch’s magnificent trilogy makes clear why the Civil Rights Movement, and indeed King’s leadership, are among the nation’s enduring achievements. In bringing these decades alive, preserving the integrity of those who marched and died, Branch gives us a crucial part of our history and heritage. -
Pillar of Fire
- By: Taylor Branch
- Narrator: Janina Edwards
- Length: 29 hours 49 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
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4.35(2622 ratings)
4.35(2622 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0039.99 USDFrom Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, the second part of his epic trilogy on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the American Civil Rights Movement. In the second volume of his three-part history, a monumental trilogy that began with Parting theFrom Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, the second part of his epic trilogy on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the American Civil Rights Movement.
... Read more
In the second volume of his three-part history, a monumental trilogy that began with Parting the Waters, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Taylor Branch portrays the Civil Rights Movement at its zenith, recounting the climactic struggles as they commanded the national stage.
Beginning with the Nation of Islam and conflict over racial separatism, Pillar of Fire takes the reader to Mississippi and Alabama: Birmingham, the murder of Medgar Evers, the “March on Washington,” the Civil Rights Act, and voter registration drives. In 1964, King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Branch’s magnificent trilogy makes clear why the Civil Rights Movement, and indeed King’s leadership, are among the nation’s enduring achievements. In bringing these decades alive, preserving the integrity of those who marched and died, Branch gives us a crucial part of our history and heritage. -
A Fierce Glory
- By: Justin Martin
- Narrator: James Edward Thomas
- Length: 10 hours 52 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: September 11, 2018
- Language: English
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4.34(101 ratings)
4.34(101 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDOn September 17, 1862, the “United States” was on the brink, facing a permanent split into two separate nations. America’s very future hung on the outcome of a single battle–and the result reverberates to this day. Given theOn September 17, 1862, the “United States” was on the brink, facing a permanent split into two separate nations. America’s very future hung on the outcome of a single battle–and the result reverberates to this day. Given the deep divisions that still rive the nation, given what unites the country, too, Antietam is more relevant now than ever.
The epic battle, fought near Sharpsburg, Maryland, was a Civil War turning point. The South had just launched its first invasion of the North; victory for Robert E. Lee would almost certainly have ended the war on Confederate terms. If the Union prevailed, Lincoln stood ready to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. He knew that freeing the slaves would lend renewed energy and lofty purpose to the North’s war effort. Lincoln needed a victory to save the divided country, but victory would come at a price. Detailed here is the cannon din and desperation, the horrors and heroes of this monumental battle, one that killed 3,650 soldiers, still the highest single-day toll in American history.
Justin Martin, an acclaimed writer of narrative nonfiction, renders this landmark event in a revealing new way. More than in previous accounts, Lincoln is laced deeply into the story. Antietam represents Lincoln at his finest, as the grief-racked president–struggling with the recent death of his son, Willie–summoned the guile necessary to manage his reluctant general, George McClellan. The Emancipation Proclamation would be the greatest gambit of the nation’s most inspired leader. And, in fact, the battle’s impact extended far beyond the field; brilliant and lasting innovations in medicine, photography, and communications were given crucial real-world tests. No mere gunfight, Antietam rippled through politics and society, transforming history.
A Fierce Glory is a fresh and vibrant account of an event that had enduring consequences that still resonate today.
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When We Rise
- By: Cleve Jones
- Narrator: Cleve Jones
- Length: 9 hours 31 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: November 29, 2016
- Language: English
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4.33(1975 ratings)
4.33(1975 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USD2017 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD WINNER The partial inspiration for the ABC television mini-series! “You could read Cleve Jones’s book because you should know about the struggle for gay, lesbian, and transgender rights from one of its key2017 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD WINNER
The partial inspiration for the ABC television mini-series!
“You could read Cleve Jones’s book because you should know about the struggle for gay, lesbian, and transgender rights from one of its key participants–maybe heroes–but really, you should read it for pleasure and joy.”–Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things to Me
Born in 1954, Cleve Jones was among the last generation of gay Americans who grew up wondering if there were others out there like himself. There were. Like thousands of other young people, Jones, nearly penniless, was drawn in the early 1970s to San Francisco, a city electrified by progressive politics and sexual freedom.
Jones found community–in the hotel rooms and ramshackle apartments shared by other young adventurers, in the city’s bathhouses and gay bars like The Stud, and in the burgeoning gay district, the Castro, where a New York transplant named Harvey Milk set up a camera shop, began shouting through his bullhorn, and soon became the nation’s most outspoken gay elected official. With Milk’s encouragement, Jones dove into politics and found his calling in “the movement.” When Milk was killed by an assassin’s bullet in 1978, Jones took up his mentor’s progressive mantle–only to see the arrival of AIDS transform his life once again.
By turns tender and uproarious, When We Rise is Jones’ account of his remarkable life. He chronicles the heartbreak of losing countless friends to AIDS, which very nearly killed him, too; his co-founding of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation during the terrifying early years of the epidemic; his conception of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the largest community art project in history; the bewitching story of 1970s San Francisco and the magnetic spell it cast for thousands of young gay people and other misfits; and the harrowing, sexy, and sometimes hilarious stories of Cleve’s passionate relationships with friends and lovers during an era defined by both unprecedented freedom and and violence alike.
When We Rise is not only the story of a hero to the LQBTQ community, but the vibrantly voice memoir of a full and transformative American life.
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To Shape a New World
- By: Tommie Shelby
- Narrator: Kevin Kenerly
- Length: 16 hours 25 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2018
- Language: English
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4.29(37 ratings)
4.29(37 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0022.95 USDMartin Luther King Jr. may be America’s most revered political figure, commemorated in statues, celebrations, and street names around the world. On the fiftieth anniversary of King’s assassination, the man and his activism are as closeMartin Luther King Jr. may be America’s most revered political figure, commemorated in statues, celebrations, and street names around the world. On the fiftieth anniversary of King’s assassination, the man and his activism are as close to public consciousness as ever. But despite his stature, the significance of King’s writings and political thought remains underappreciated.
In To Shape a New World, Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry write that the marginalization of King’s ideas reflects a romantic, consensus history that renders the civil rights movement inherently conservative–an effort not at radical reform but at “living up to” enduring ideals laid down by the nation’s founders. On this view, King marshaled lofty rhetoric to help redeem the ideas of universal (white) heroes, but produced little original thought. This failure to engage deeply and honestly with King’s writings allows him to be conscripted into political projects he would not endorse, including the pernicious form of “color blindness” that insists, amid glaring race-based injustice, that racism has been overcome.
Cornel West, Danielle Allen, Martha Nussbaum, Robert Gooding-Williams, and other authors join Shelby and Terry in careful, critical engagement with King’s understudied writings on labor and welfare rights, voting rights, racism, civil disobedience, nonviolence, economic inequality, poverty, love, just-war theory, virtue ethics, political theology, imperialism, nationalism, reparations, and social justice. In King’s exciting and learned work, the authors find an array of compelling challenges to some of the most pressing political dilemmas of our present, and rethink the legacy of this towering figure.
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In Search of the Color Purple
- By: Salamishah Tillet
- Narrator: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 6 hours 25 minutes
- Publisher: Dreamscape Media
- Publish date: January 12, 2021
- Language: English
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4.29(145 ratings)
4.29(145 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDAlice Walker made history in 1982 when she became the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, both for The Color Purple. Published in the Reagan Era amid a severe backlash to civil rights, the jazz-age novel tellsAlice Walker made history in 1982 when she became the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, both for The Color Purple. Published in the Reagan Era amid a severe backlash to civil rights, the jazz-age novel tells the story of an African-American woman haunted by domestic and sexual violence.
Prominent academic and activist Salamishah Tillet combines cultural criticism, history, and memoir to explore Walker’s epistolary novel, showing how it has influenced and been informed by the zeitgeist of the time. The Color Purple received both praise and criticism upon publication, and the conversation it sparked around race and gender still continues today. It has been adapted for an Oscar-nominated film and a hit Broadway musical.
Through interviews with Walker, Oprah Winfrey, Quincy Jones, and others, as well as archival research, Tillet studies Walker’s life and the origins of her subjects, including violence, sexuality, gender, and politics. Reading The Color Purple at age fifteen was a groundbreaking experience for Tillet. It continues to resonate with her–as a sexual-violence survivor, as a teacher of the novel, and as an accomplished academic. Provocative and personal, In Search of the Color Purple is a bold work from an important public intellectual.
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A Stone of Hope
- By: Jim St. Germain
- Narrator: Ron Butler
- Length: 8 hours 56 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: July 04, 2017
- Language: English
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4.29(190 ratings)
4.29(190 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USDIn the tradition of The Other Wes Moore and Just Mercy, a searing memoir and clarion call to save our at-risk youth by a young black man who himself was a lost cause–until he landed in a rehabilitation program that saved his life and gave himIn the tradition of The Other Wes Moore and Just Mercy, a searing memoir and clarion call to save our at-risk youth by a young black man who himself was a lost cause–until he landed in a rehabilitation program that saved his life and gave him purpose.
Born into abject poverty in Haiti, young Jim St. Germain moved to Brooklyn’s Crown Heights, into an overcrowded apartment with his family. He quickly adapted to street life and began stealing, dealing drugs, and growing increasingly indifferent to despair and violence. By the time he was arrested for dealing crack cocaine, he had been handcuffed more than a dozen times. At the age of fifteen the walls of the system were closing around him.
But instead of prison, St. Germain was placed in “Boys Town,” a nonsecure detention facility designed for rehabilitation. Surrounded by mentors and positive male authority who enforced a system based on structure and privileges rather than intimidation and punishment, St. Germain slowly found his way, eventually getting his GED and graduating from college. Then he made the bravest decision of his life: to live, as an adult, in the projects where he had lost himself, and to work to reform the way the criminal justice system treats at-risk youth.
A Stone of Hope is more than an incredible coming-of-age story; told with a degree of candor that requires the deepest courage, it is also a rallying cry. No one is who they are going to be–or capable of being–at sixteen. St. Germain is living proof of this. He contends that we must work to build a world in which we do not give up on a swath of the next generation.
Passionate, eloquent, and timely, A Stone of Hope is an inspiring challenge for every American, and is certain to spark debate nationwide.
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Sand and Blood
- By: John Carlos Frey
- Narrator: Gustavo Rex
- Length: 7 hours 2 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: June 25, 2019
- Language: English
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4.28(92 ratings)
4.28(92 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDA damning portrait of the U.S.-Mexico border, where militaristic fantasies are unleashed, violent technologies are tested, and immigrants are targeted. Over the past three decades, U.S. immigration and border security policies have turned the... Read moreA damning portrait of the U.S.-Mexico border, where militaristic fantasies are unleashed, violent technologies are tested, and immigrants are targeted.Over the past three decades, U.S. immigration and border security policies have turned the southern states into conflict zones, spawned a network of immigrant detention centers, and unleashed an army of ICE agents into cities across the country.
As award-winning journalist John Carlos Frey reveals in this groundbreaking book, the war against immigrants has been escalating for decades, fueled by defense contractors and lobbyists seeking profits and politicians–Republicans and Democrats alike–who relied on racist fear-mongering to turn out votes. After 9/11, while Americans’ attention was trained on the Middle East and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the War on Terror was ramping up on our own soil–aimed not at terrorists but at economic migrants, refugees, and families from South and Central America seeking jobs, safety, and freedom in the U.S.
But we are no safer. Instead, families are being ripped apart, undocumented people are living in fear, and thousands of migrants have died in detention or crossing the border.
Taking readers to the Border Patrol outposts, unmarked graves, detention centers, and halls of power, Sand and Blood is a frightening, essential story we must not ignore.
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American Injustice
- By: David S. Rudolf
- Narrator: David S. Rudolf
- Length: 10 hours 46 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: January 25, 2022
- Language: English
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4.26(183 ratings)
4.26(183 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.99 USDFrom the fearless defense attorney and civil rights lawyer who rose to fame with Netflix’s The Staircase comes a “bracing account of abuses of power and corruption in the criminal justice system.” (The Guardian) “A fineFrom the fearless defense attorney and civil rights lawyer who rose to fame with Netflix’s The Staircase comes a “bracing account of abuses of power and corruption in the criminal justice system.” (The Guardian)
“A fine companion to Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy and Emily Bazelon’s Charged. A stellar–and often shocking–report on a broken criminal justice system.” –Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
In the past thirty years alone, more than 2,800 innocent American prisoners–their combined sentences surpassing 25,000 years–have been exonerated and freed after being condemned for crimes they did not commit. Terrifyingly, this number represents only a fraction of the actual number of persons wrongfully accused and convicted over the same period.
Renowned criminal defense and civil rights attorney David Rudolf has spent decades defending the wrongfully accused. In American Injustice, he draws from his years of experience in the American criminal legal system to shed light on the misconduct that exists at all levels of law enforcement and the tragic consequences that follow in its wake. Tracing these themes through the lens of some of his most important cases–including new details from the Michael Peterson trial made famous in The Staircase–Rudolf takes the reader inside crime scenes to examine forensic evidence left by perpetrators; revisits unsolved murders to detail how and why the true culprits were never prosecuted; reveals how confirmation bias leads police and prosecutors to employ tactics that make wrongful arrests and prosecutions more likely; and exposes how poverty and racism fundamentally distort the system.
In American Injustice, Rudolf gives a voice to those who have been the victim of wrongful accusations and shows in the starkest terms the human impact of legal wrongdoing. Effortlessly blending gripping true-crime reporting and searing observations on civil rights in America, American Injustice takes readers behind the scenes of a justice system in desperate need of reform.
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Reflections by Rosa Parks
- By: Rosa Parks
- Length: 1 hours 20 minutes
- Publisher: Zondervan
- Publish date: January 09, 2018
- Language: English
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4.25(152 ratings)
4.25(152 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0014.99 USDOn December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was not trying to start a movement. She was simply tired of the social injustice. Yet, her simple act of courage started a chain of events thatOn December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was not trying to start a movement. She was simply tired of the social injustice. Yet, her simple act of courage started a chain of events that forever shaped the landscape of American race relations.
Now, decades after her quiet defiance inspired the modern civil rights movement, Mrs. Parks’s own words tell of her courageous life, her passion for freedom and equality, and her strong faith. Reflections by Rosa Parks celebrates the principles and convictions that guided her through a remarkable life. It is a printed record of her legacy—her lasting message to a world still struggling to live in harmony.
Including historic and beautiful pictures, this collection of Rosa Parks’s reflections includes topics like dealing with fear, facing injustice, developing character and determination, faith in God, and her hope for the future.
“I want to be remembered as a person who stood up to injustice,” writes Rosa Parks, “who wanted a better world for young people.” With Mrs. Parks’s words of wisdom, humility, and compassion, this book will inspire people of all races to carry on her great legacy.
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Profit and Punishment
- By: Tony Messenger
- Narrator: Karen Chilton
- Length: 8 hours 18 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish date: December 07, 2021
- Language: English
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4.25(295 ratings)
4.25(295 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USDIn Profit and Punishment, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist exposes the tragedy of modern-day debtors prisons, and how they destroy the lives of poor Americans swept up in a system designed to penalize the most impoverished. “Intimate, raw,In Profit and Punishment, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist exposes the tragedy of modern-day debtors prisons, and how they destroy the lives of poor Americans swept up in a system designed to penalize the most impoverished.
“Intimate, raw, and utterly scathing” — Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water
“Crucial evidence that the justice system is broken and has to be fixed. Please read this book.” —James Patterson, #1 New York Times bestselling authorAs a columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Tony Messenger has spent years in county and municipal courthouses documenting how poor Americans are convicted of minor crimes and then saddled with exorbitant fines and fees. If they are unable to pay, they are often sent to prison, where they are then charged a pay-to-stay bill, in a cycle that soon creates a mountain of debt that can take years to pay off. These insidious penalties are used to raise money for broken local and state budgets, often overseen by for-profit companies, and it is one of the central issues of the criminal justice reform movement.
In the tradition of Evicted and The New Jim Crow, Messenger has written a call to arms, shining a light on a two-tiered system invisible to most Americans. He introduces readers to three single mothers caught up in this system: living in poverty in Missouri, Oklahoma, and South Carolina, whose lives are upended when minor offenses become monumental financial and personal catastrophes. As these women struggle to clear their debt and move on with their lives, readers meet the dogged civil rights advocates and lawmakers fighting by their side to create a more equitable and fair court of justice. In this remarkable feat of reporting, Tony Messenger exposes injustice that is agonizing and infuriating in its mundane cruelty, as he champions the rights and dignity of some of the most vulnerable Americans.
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.
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The Sword and the Shield
- By: Peniel E. Joseph
- Narrator: Zeno Robinson
- Length: 11 hours 49 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: March 31, 2020
- Language: English
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4.22(1094 ratings)
4.22(1094 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDThis dual biography of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King upends longstanding preconceptions to transform our understanding of the twentieth century’s most iconic African American leaders.To most Americans, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.This dual biography of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King upends longstanding preconceptions to transform our understanding of the twentieth century’s most iconic African American leaders.To most Americans, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. represent contrasting ideals: self-defense vs. nonviolence, black power vs. civil rights, the sword vs. the shield. The struggle for black freedom is wrought with the same contrasts. While nonviolent direct action is remembered as an unassailable part of American democracy, the movement’s militancy is either vilified or erased outright. In The Sword and the Shield, Peniel E. Joseph upends these misconceptions and reveals a nuanced portrait of two men who, despite markedly different backgrounds, inspired and pushed each other throughout their adult lives. This is a strikingly revisionist biography, not only of Malcolm and Martin, but also of the movement and era they came to define.... Read more
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Cliff Weitzman
Cliff Weitzman is a dyslexia advocate and the CEO and founder of Speechify, the #1 text-to-speech app in the world, totaling over 100,000 5-star reviews and ranking first place in the App Store for the News & Magazines category. In 2017, Weitzman was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work making the internet more accessible to people with learning disabilities. Cliff Weitzman has been featured in EdSurge, Inc., PC Mag, Entrepreneur, Mashable, among other leading outlets.
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