Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal News Blogs -> Lawbeat

Legal News

: Lawbeat

A civil rights history reading list for 1/20/09

By Mark Obbie

To mark today's historic inauguration, LawBeat recommends the books that taught him the civil rights history of America -- and the central importance of both the rule of law and public knowledge of its government's behavior. Today, we give thanks to the journalists and historians whose inquiries and writings make today's milestone that much more powerful:Taylor Branch's three-part history of "America In the King Years": Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire, At Canaan's EdgeRichard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for EqualityJ. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American FamiliesMaryanne Vollers, Ghosts of Mississippi: The Murder of Medgar Evers, the Trials of Byron De La Beckwith, and the Haunting of the New SouthDiane McWhorter, Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights RevolutionCharles Lane, The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of ReconstructionWilliam S. McFeely, Frederick DouglassJack Bass, Unlikely Heroes: The dramatic story of the Southern judges of the Fifth Circuit who translated the Supreme Court's Brown decision into a revolution for equalityAn admittedly incomplete list, and it omits many wonderful Civil War historical narratives. But not a bad starting point if you haven't taken a hard look at this history. Now, at least, these may be read without such hopelessness. 

Full post as published by Lawbeat on January 20, 2009 (boomark / email).