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Brings to light the stories of the unsung heroes of the civil rights movement, drawing on the author's unique perspective in the history of the fight for social justice in America.

The respected civil rights leader and host of "PoliticsNation" presents a rousing call to action that examines the administrations of Barack Obama and Donald Trump while heralding the movements that have emerged in response to today's political turbulence.

It wasn't that long ago that black citizens had to move to the back of the bus. In this stirring collection, NPR tells stories large and small: of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and the March on Washington; of Pullman porters, an invaluable green book, and women who baked pies to support the Montgomery bus boycott. Personal recollections and historical accounts paint vivid pictures of individuals and events that transformed a nation.

"From the American Revolution to Black Lives Matter, Americans have come to associate freedom with the fight of the oppressed for a better world. Few ideas are as central to the national mythos. But whenever the federal government has taken a stand for racial minorities, however halfhearted, white Americans have been quick to weaponize the concept of freedom, framing the state itself as a tyrannical obstacle to their own liberties. In Freedom's Dominion,...

Chronicling the riveting history and personal experiences, at once liberating and challenging, harrowing and inspiring, deeply revealing and profoundly transforming, of African Americans on the road from the advent of the automobile through the seismic changes of the 1960s and beyond, it explores the deep background of a recent phrase rooted in realities that have been an indelible part of the African American experience for hundreds of years.

This chilling and harrowing account tells the story of the Scottsboro Boys, nine African-American teenagers who, when riding the rails during the Great Depression, found their lives destroyed after two white women falsely accused them of rape. Award-winning author Larry Dane Brimner explains how it took more than eighty years for their wrongful convictions to be overturned. In 1931, nine teenagers were arrested as they traveled on a train through...

"How the automobile fundamentally changed African American life-the true history beyond the Best Picture-winning movie. The ultimate symbol of independence and possibility, the automobile has shaped this country from the moment the first Model T rolled off Henry Ford's assembly line. Yet cars have always held distinct importance for African Americans, allowing black families to evade the many dangers presented by an entrenched racist society and to...

How the blinding of Sergeant Isaac Woodard changed the course of Americas 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 drivers 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...