BEFORE YOU GO

There are hundreds of books on this history. These are a few to begin with. [Fr. Daniel's pick for group discussion.]

• Stride Toward Freedom, Martin Luther King Jr. (1958). King's own account of the Montgomery bus boycott.
• The Peculiar Institution, Kenneth Stampp (1956). The classic study of American slavery as a system of control and labor.
• Slavery by Another Name, Douglas Blackmon (2008). How Black Americans were re-enslaved after the Civil War.
• The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander (2010). Mass incarceration as racial control.
• My Soul Is Rested, Howell Raines (1977). An oral history of the movement, 1955–1968.
• King: A Life, Jonathan Eig (2023). The Pulitzer Prize–winning biography.
• Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson (2014). The founder of EJI on defending those on death row.
• The Cross and the Lynching Tree, James Cone (2011). The crucifixion read beside the lynching of Black Americans.

The Legacy Museum's gift shop has a large selection. The NewSouth Bookstore is at 105 S. Court St, a few steps from Court Square.