Till is a profoundly emotional and cinematic film about the true story of Mamie Till Mobley's relentless pursuit of justice for her 14-year-old son, Emmett Till, who, in 1955, was lynched while visiting his cousins in Mississippi. In Mamie's poignant journey of grief turned to action, we see the universal power of a mother's ability to change the world.

This study of school integration struggles in 1950s Texas demonstrates how power politics denied black students their constitutional rights. In the famous Brown v. the Board of Education decisions of 1954 and 1955, the United States Supreme Court ruled that "separate but equal" schools for black and white students were unconstitutional. Yet it took more than a decade of struggle before black students gained full access to previously white schools....

Early on a summer morning in 1974, local officials found the jailer Clarence Alligood stabbed to death in a cell in the women's section of a rural North Carolina jail. Fleeing the scene was Joan Little, twenty years old, poor, Black, and in trouble. After turning herself in, Little faced a possible death sentence in the state's gas chamber. At her trial, which was followed around the world, Little claimed that she had killed Alligood in self-defense...

This personal history chronicles the triumph and loss of a 1960s initiative, to recruit minority students to Columbia University's School of Architecture. At the intersection of US educational, architectural, and urban history, When Ivory Towers Were Black tells the story of how, an unparalleled cohort of ethnic minority students overcame institutional roadblocks to earn degrees in architecture from Columbia University. Its narrative begins with...

Howard Fast's firsthand account of the infamous 1949 Peekskill riots, including historical documents, photos, and newspaper reports In 1949, author Howard Fast found himself in the middle of a violent and terrifying anticommunist riot in Peekskill, New York. Fast was the master of ceremonies at a civil rights benefit concert featuring Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, and others. But local newspapers stoked anticommunist anger, and the event was besieged...

"The definitive history of the Kerner Commission, whose report on urban unrest reshaped American debates about race and inequality In Separate and Unequal, historian Steven M. Gillon offers a revelatory new history of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders--popularly known as the Kerner Commission. Convened by President Lyndon Johnson after riots in Newark and Detroit left dozens dead and thousands injured, the commission issued a report...

An explosive, long-forgotten story of police violence that exposes the historical roots of today's criminal justice crisis On a steamy Monday evening in 1900, New Orleans police officers confronted a black man named Robert Charles as he sat on a doorstep in a working-class neighborhood where racial tensions were running high. What happened next would trigger the largest manhunt in the city's history, while white mobs took to the streets, attacking...

Extraordinary conversations between a confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. and a modern-day activist leads to the game-changing realizations that a second-wave civil rights movement is unfolding and that we must embrace the lessons of the past to effect lasting change. In Montgomery, AL, one of the most vibrant and controversial hot spots of the American civil rights movement, Nelson Malden's barbershop was where its courageous leaders, including...

"Tells the story of African Americans' response to the atomic threat in the postwar period. Examines the anti-nuclear writing and activism of figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Lorraine Hansberry as well as the placement of black characters in white-authored doomsday fiction and nonfiction"--Provided by publisher.