100 books like Freedom's Children

By Ellen S. Levine,

Here are 100 books that Freedom's Children fans have personally recommended if you like Freedom's Children. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

Robert H. Mayer Author Of In the Name of Emmett Till: How the Children of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Showed Us Tomorrow

From my list on history that engage and even excite young readers.

Why am I passionate about this?

First a memory from my twelve years as a high school teacher: One day one of my ninth-grade history students remarked, “You are a nice guy Mr. Mayer. You can’t help it if you teach a boring subject.” That comment energized me, pushing me to show my students just how exciting the discipline of history was. I wanted my students to come to know historical actors, to hear their voices, and to feel their humanity. I then took that same project into my twenty-nine years as a teacher educator and finally into my life as a writer of historical non-fiction for young people. 

Robert's book list on history that engage and even excite young readers

Robert H. Mayer Why did Robert love this book?

In my writing I love to relate the stories of important historical actors that are unknown. Especially young actors.

Phillip Hoose apparently shares those loves. He gives us the story of Claudette Colvin who, at fifteen, refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus to a White person. This was nine months before Rosa Parks’ famous stand. Through Hoose’s beautifully-rendered narrative, we are on the bus with Colvin that day and we are later in the courtroom when she bravely tells her story. 

As I said previously, I love to use the actual words historical actors spoke in my books. Hoose seems to share that passion as well. The author carried out fourteen interviews with Ms. Colvin. Through her own voice, we come to know this amazing young woman.

By Phillip Hoose,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Claudette Colvin as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 13, 14, 15, and 16.

What is this book about?

"When it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can't sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, 'This is not right.'" - Claudette Colvin
On March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her classmates and dismissed by community leaders. Undaunted, a year later she dared to challenge…


Book cover of March: Book Three

Robert H. Mayer Author Of In the Name of Emmett Till: How the Children of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Showed Us Tomorrow

From my list on history that engage and even excite young readers.

Why am I passionate about this?

First a memory from my twelve years as a high school teacher: One day one of my ninth-grade history students remarked, “You are a nice guy Mr. Mayer. You can’t help it if you teach a boring subject.” That comment energized me, pushing me to show my students just how exciting the discipline of history was. I wanted my students to come to know historical actors, to hear their voices, and to feel their humanity. I then took that same project into my twenty-nine years as a teacher educator and finally into my life as a writer of historical non-fiction for young people. 

Robert's book list on history that engage and even excite young readers

Robert H. Mayer Why did Robert love this book?

I had the honor of meeting John Lewis and introducing him when he spoke at the college where I taught.

You can have no better guide to the civil rights movement than the saintly John Lewis. And Lewis’ insider’s look is conveyed as a graphic novel. The images enhance the drama introduced through narration and dialogue. (I was excited to see depictions of places I had visited from my travels in the South.)

March Three begins with the bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, includes a discussion of the Mississippi movement, and concludes with a powerful telling of the event Lewis is best known for, the Selma voting rights campaign. You can broaden what you learn from March Three by also reading Books One and Two.

By John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell (illustrator)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked March as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 13, 14, 15, and 16.

What is this book about?

2016 National Book Award Winner for Young People's Literature2017 Printz Award Winner2017 Coretta Scott King Author Award Winner2017 Sibert Medal Winner2017 YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Winner2017 Walter Award Winner
"One of the Best Books of 2016" - Publishers Weekly
Welcome to the stunning conclusion of the award-winning and best-selling MARCH trilogy. Congressman John Lewis, an American icon and one ofthe key figures of the civil rights movement, joins co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell to bring the lessons of history to vivid life for a new generation, urgently relevant for today's world.
By the fall of 1963,…


Book cover of The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights

Robert H. Mayer Author Of In the Name of Emmett Till: How the Children of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Showed Us Tomorrow

From my list on history that engage and even excite young readers.

Why am I passionate about this?

First a memory from my twelve years as a high school teacher: One day one of my ninth-grade history students remarked, “You are a nice guy Mr. Mayer. You can’t help it if you teach a boring subject.” That comment energized me, pushing me to show my students just how exciting the discipline of history was. I wanted my students to come to know historical actors, to hear their voices, and to feel their humanity. I then took that same project into my twenty-nine years as a teacher educator and finally into my life as a writer of historical non-fiction for young people. 

Robert's book list on history that engage and even excite young readers

Robert H. Mayer Why did Robert love this book?

I believe that historical nonfiction is best told as a rich narrative with compelling characters and a page-turning plot structure. No one accomplishes that ideal better than Steve Sheinkin. 

Sheinkin’s power is on full display in this book about the Port Chicago 50, a group of Black sailors during World War II. Living in a world of rampant racism, the men are relegated to the dangerous task of loading ammunition onto ships. When the danger and racism become untenable, many refuse to work. Fifty of the men are charged with mutiny, convicted, and sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor. 

I love to include the actual words of historical actors in my writing and so does Sheinkin. His book draws from oral histories of the sailors. What power their voices bring to the story!!!!

By Steve Sheinkin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Port Chicago 50 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 10, 11, 12, and 13.

What is this book about?

An astonishing World War II military story of civil rights from New York Times bestselling author and Newbery Honor recipient Steve Sheinkin.

A National Book Award Finalist
A YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Finalist
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year

On July 17, 1944, a massive explosion rocked the segregated Navy base at Port Chicago, California, killing more than 300 sailors who were at the docks, critically injuring off-duty men in their bunks, and shattering windows up to a mile away. On August 9th, 244 men refused to go back to work until unsafe and unfair…


Book cover of You Want Women to Vote, Lizzie Stanton?

Robert H. Mayer Author Of In the Name of Emmett Till: How the Children of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Showed Us Tomorrow

From my list on history that engage and even excite young readers.

Why am I passionate about this?

First a memory from my twelve years as a high school teacher: One day one of my ninth-grade history students remarked, “You are a nice guy Mr. Mayer. You can’t help it if you teach a boring subject.” That comment energized me, pushing me to show my students just how exciting the discipline of history was. I wanted my students to come to know historical actors, to hear their voices, and to feel their humanity. I then took that same project into my twenty-nine years as a teacher educator and finally into my life as a writer of historical non-fiction for young people. 

Robert's book list on history that engage and even excite young readers

Robert H. Mayer Why did Robert love this book?

When I taught, I hoped to engage students by making historical figures as human as possible. At the time I wish I had known the writing of Jean Fritz who brings the people of history to life. Magnificently.  

Peppering her books with oddball information about her subjects, she allows them to become more human. And in Jean Fritz books, people talk and act. These features are present in Fritz’s wonderful biography of the women’s rights activist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

The reader comes to know Ms. Stanton intimately, her warm friendships with fellow activists, her tensions with her father, her overall independent spirit. And we get a wonderful history of the early American women’s movement. 

Jean Fritz delivers for younger readers and makes history engaging, human, and, yes, exciting.

By Jean Fritz,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked You Want Women to Vote, Lizzie Stanton? as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 8, 9, 10, and 11.

What is this book about?

This biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton is as spirited as the women's rights pioneer herself.

Who says women shouldn't speak in public? And why can't they vote? These are questions Elizabeth Cady Stanton grew up asking herself. Her father believed that girls didn't count as much as boys, and her own husband once got so embarrassed when she spoke at a convention that he left town. Luckily Lizzie wasn't one to let society stop her from fighting for equality for everyone. And though she didn't live long enough to see women get to vote, our entire country benefited from her…


Book cover of Rabble Rousers: The American Far Right in the Civil Rights Era

D.J. Mulloy Author Of Years of Rage: White Supremacy in the United States from the Klan to the Alt-Right

From my list on understanding the history of US white supremacy.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a history professor, but I’m also a reader. I love books—fiction and nonfiction—that reveal a world, a character, an idea, or a political movement in ways that I didn’t previously fully understand. That make me see more deeply and think more clearly. I teach and write about the history of the United States, especially its history of radical or extreme political groups. Where did this interest come from? Well, I first visited the U.S. in 1980, when I was eleven years old, and truth be told, my fascination with the country and its people has not abated since.

D.J.'s book list on understanding the history of US white supremacy

D.J. Mulloy Why did D.J. love this book?

We tend to think that the success of the civil rights movement in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s was somehow inevitable. But as Clive Webb shows in this marvelous history, this was not really the case. Resistance to civil rights, especially in the South, was deep-seated, widespread, and vicious.

Unearthing the almost forgotten history of racist extremists such as Bryant Bowles, John Kaspar, J.B. Stoner, Rear Admiral John Crommelin, and Major General Edwin Walker, Webb reminds us of the sobering reality that there is often very little separating extremist voices from those of many “ordinary” Americans.

By Clive Webb,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Rabble Rousers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This title connects civil rights opponents to America's tradition of radical conservatism. The decade following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision saw white southerners mobilize in massive resistance to racial integration. Most segregationists conceded that ultimately they could only postpone the demise of Jim Crow. Some militant whites, however, believed it possible to win the civil rights struggle. Histories of the black freedom struggle, when they mention these racist zealots at all, confine them to the margin of the story. These extremist whites are caricatured as ineffectual members of the lunatic fringe. Civil rights activists, however, saw them…


Book cover of King: A Life

Rick Swegan Author Of The Practice of Ethical Leadership: Insights from Psychology and Business in Building an Ethical Bottom Line

From my list on moral courage in a world where courage seems to be lacking.

Why am I passionate about this?

For a long time, I’ve been intrigued by the different ways that people reason about moral issues. Add to that a mystification about why smart people do unethical things and you have the basis for our book on ethical leadership. I’ve spent the better part of my career evaluating and coaching potential leaders and realized relatively recently that I wanted to work with people who did the “right thing.” Demonstrating the moral courage to speak up in the face of opposition has become increasingly difficult—hence my list of books on moral courage. I hope you enjoy it.

Rick's book list on moral courage in a world where courage seems to be lacking

Rick Swegan Why did Rick love this book?

Eig continues another theme that captivates me—that great heroes can be human, with personal failings alongside a compelling voice for social justice.

I love the nuanced, complex picture of King that Eig draws. He shows us the complicated picture of a man that called to our better nature while struggling with his own demons. This is a great portrait of a man and the times he lived in.

By Jonathan Eig,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked King as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig's King is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. - and the first to include recently declassified FBI files.

In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself.

He casts fresh light on the King family's origins as well as MLK's complex relationships with…


Book cover of Fog of War: The Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement

Charles C. Bolton Author Of Home Front Battles: World War II Mobilization and Race in the Deep South

From my list on U.S. home front during World War II.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian of the U.S. South. While writing a biography of Mississippi Governor William Winter, I discovered that a factor contributing to his future racial moderation was his service as an instructor of black troops in World War II’s segregated military. While historians have long recognized that WWII changed the region, I wanted to know more about how wartime economic and military mobilization impacted the South and Southerners. I explored some little-known wartime case studies, such as stories about the Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, the Bell Bomber Aircraft Plant in Marietta, Georgia, and the Black 364th Infantry Regiment story.  

Charles' book list on U.S. home front during World War II

Charles C. Bolton Why did Charles love this book?

Was World War 2 simply a prelude to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s?

The eleven authors of the essays in this collection examine the wartime struggle for civil rights from various angles, and like many historical questions, the answers they provide are complicated. While wartime rhetoric, federal actions, and military service all helped advance the black freedom movement—which had been underway for decades—those same forces also motivated opponents of black equality to resist racial change. 

By Kevin M. Kruse (editor), Stephen Tuck (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fog of War as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This collection is a timely reconsideration of the intersection between two of the dominant events of twentieth-century American history, the upheaval wrought by the Second World War and the social revolution brought about by the African American struggle for equality. Scholars from a wide range of fields explore the impact of war on the longer history of African American protest from many angles: from black veterans to white segregationists, from the rural South to northern cities, from popular culture to federal politics, and from the American confrontations to international connections.
It is well known that World War II gave rise…


Book cover of Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement

Julie Kabat Author Of Love Letter from Pig: My Brother's Story of Freedom Summer

From my list on building compassion around issues of race.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a child, it was shocking to observe prejudice and bullying. I wanted with all my being to resist, to make things right. I trust that in this I am not alone. Juxtaposed, I remember instances of compassion and still feel grateful. My oldest brother Luke helped me think deeply about these kinds of events. In response, I dedicated myself to a career in music and arts in education. I felt blessed to bring students from different cultures together to build creativity, understanding, and community. I wanted to empower young people to voice their feelings and thoughts in the poetry, stories, and plays they wrote, set to music, and performed. 

Julie's book list on building compassion around issues of race

Julie Kabat Why did Julie love this book?

How could I or anyone, except a bigot, not love John Lewis for his towering integrity, bravery, and authenticity? His commitment to the beloved community: “Good trouble,” he declared, calling himself and his generation to action, to protest. Non-violent resistance was his touchstone––learning how to love in the face of hate.

His sweeping memoir provides an inside, close-up view of the Civil Rights Movement at its height in the 60s. As executive director of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), he held fast to his ideals, grappling with the most difficult of questions and obstacles. The beautiful story from his childhood in Alabama, during a storm threatening to upend his aunt’s house, explains the title, Walking with the Wind. I hope to keep walking on the path he set. 

By John Lewis, Michael D'Orso,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Walking with the Wind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An award-winning national bestseller, Walking with the Wind is one of our most important records of the American Civil Rights Movement. Told by John Lewis, who Cornel West calls a “national treasure,” this is a gripping first-hand account of the fight for civil rights and the courage it takes to change a nation.

In 1957, a teenaged boy named John Lewis left a cotton farm in Alabama for Nashville, the epicenter of the struggle for civil rights in America. Lewis’s adherence to nonviolence guided that critical time and established him as one of the movement’s most charismatic and courageous leaders.…


Book cover of At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power

Why am I passionate about this?

I started my career teaching high school. I attended amazing professional development institutes, where scholars showed me how the stories I’d learned and then taught to my own students were so oversimplified that they had become factually incorrect. I was hooked. I kept wondering what else I’d gotten wrong. I earned a Ph.D. in modern US History with specialties in women’s and gender history and war and society, and now I’m an Associate Professor of History at Iowa State University and the Coordinator of ISU’s Social Studies Education Program. I focus on historical complexity and human motivations because they are the key to understanding change.

Amy's book list on books about twenteith-century U.S. History that make you rethink something you thought you already knew

Amy J. Rutenberg Why did Amy love this book?

We live in a time when personal convenience seems to trump everything else. So how is it that virtually the entire Black community of Montgomery, Alabama, stayed off the city buses for over a year in the mid-1950s?

The first three chapters of this book answer that question in a completely new way that made the realities of the Jim Crow South and the dangers of the struggle for racial justice snap into focus for me. The boycott was tangentially about segregation on buses, but really, argues McGuire, it was a fight for bodily integrity, safety, and self-respect.

Because it deals with rape and sexual assault, this can be a hard book to read, but it literally gave me a different understanding of what “equality” means.

By Danielle L. McGuire,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked At the Dark End of the Street as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Here is the courageous, groundbreaking story of Rosa Parks and Recy Taylor—a story that reinterprets the history of America's civil rights movement in terms of the sexual violence committed against Black women by white men.

"An important step to finally facing the terrible legacies of race and gender in this country.” —The Washington Post

Rosa Parks was often described as a sweet and reticent elderly woman whose tired feet caused her to defy segregation on Montgomery’s city buses, and whose supposedly solitary, spontaneous act sparked the 1955 bus boycott that gave birth to the civil rights movement. The truth of…


Book cover of Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America

John L. Brooke Author Of "There Is a North": Fugitive Slaves, Political Crisis, and Cultural Transformation in the Coming of the Civil War

From my list on the North during the Civil War.

Why am I passionate about this?

After a life of teaching and writing, I have been reading widely in the literature on the Civil War North to set the stage for my next project, a book on the life and times of my great-grandfather, who has loomed over my imagination since I was a boy during the years of the Civil War Bicentennial. Both a soldier and politician, he emerged as one the most militant of the Radical Republicans in the early years of Reconstruction. What follows is my personal list of very important, very readable, recent books on the Northern experience of the war that I will have by my side as I start writing. 

John's book list on the North during the Civil War

John L. Brooke Why did John love this book?

In September 2017, a new statue was unveiled on the south side of Philadelphia’s City Hall. In contrast to the equestrian statues of Union generals–and former mayor Frank Rizzo (now removed)–to the north of City Hall, this statue commemorated a young Black man who rose to leadership in the South Street neighborhoods of Civil War Philadelphia before he was assassinated during an election riot in 1871.

Biddle and Murray, veteran reporters at the Philadelphia Inquirer, tell a sweeping story of crisis, war, and reconstruction, reaching from the city out across the country, in a powerful narrative focusing on Octavius V. Catto, one of the era’s most tragically lost figures. Catto, the son of a minister who purchased his family’s freedom from slavery in Charleston and settled in Philadelphia, was starting to work as a teacher when the war broke out.

From this position in the Black community, Catto raised a…

By Daniel R. Biddle, Murray Dubin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Tasting Freedom as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Octavius Valentine Catto was an orator who shared stages with Frederick Douglass, a second baseman on Philadelphia's best black baseball team, a teacher at the city's finest black school and an activist who fought in the state capital and on the streets for equal rights. With his racially-charged murder, the nation lost a civil rights pioneer-one who risked his life a century before Selma and Birmingham.

In Tasting Freedom Murray Dubin and Pulitzer Prize winner Dan Biddle painstakingly chronicle the life of this charismatic black leader-a "free" black whose freedom was in name only. Born in the American south, where…


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Interested in African Americans, African diaspora, and presidential biography?

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