13 Significant Books on Civil Rights for Martin Luther King Jr. Day

A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and an unwavering call to fix our broken justice system, from the influential lawyer behind the Equal Justice Initiative.

This profound winner of the National Book Award, hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” explores the biggest questions about America’s racial history through the intimate lens of a father’s concern for his son.

Told through essay, image, and poetry, Claudia Rankine’s provocative book is a powerful testament to the effects of mounting racial aggressions on the individual and collective in the twenty-first century.

With an introduction from the film adaptation’s director, Lee Daniels, this biography explores Eugene Allen’s tenure in the White House as a butler to eight U.S. Presidents during some of the country’s most critical periods.

In 1960s Mississippi, three women from very different walks of life risk everything to come together to tell the stories of “the help”—the black maids who work for white families. Told through alternating voices, it is a powerful tale of desperation, fortitude, and, above all, tremendous hope.

From the Montgomery bus boycott to the lunch counter sit-ins to the Freedom Rides, Lynne Olson skillfully tells the long-overlooked story of the extraordinary women who were among the most fearless, resourceful, and tenacious leaders of the Civil Rights Movement.

Erin Gruwell, a teacher in Long Beach, California, challenged her “at-risk” students to confront intolerance and misunderstanding and to record their thoughts in diaries, which was the genesis of this inspiring book.

With symbolic power and lyrical precision, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy’s reckoning with his identity as the stepson of a Pentecostal minister in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935.

This groundbreaking and candid exploration of shifting racial boundaries, first published in 1929, tells the story of two childhood friends whose paths have diverged: Clare Kendry, who passes as white despite her African American heritage, and Irene Redfield, who has chosen to remain within the black community.

Breathtaking and beautifully readable retellings of Black American folk tales of slaves who possessed ancient magic that enabled them to fly away to freedom. At the same time, this is a tale of those who did not have the ability to fly but had to rely upon their imaginations to set them free.

Pecola Breedlove is a young black girl who prays every day for the blonde hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to fit in with her peers. This novel is a powerful examination of beauty, conformity, race, class, and gender from the legendary Toni Morrison.