The most recommended books about Montgomery Alabama

Black southern mass action against segregation commenced in Montgomery, AL with the 1955-56 bus boycott that catapulted Martin Luther King, Jr., to national fame, then finally broke through U. S. presidential ambivalence with the 1963 protests in Birmingham that were met with heavily-photographed police violence, and culminated with the 1965 Selma marches that led to the enactment of the Voting Rights Act. These three Alabama cities represent the cornerstones of that dramatic 1955-1965 decade, and Thornton’s magisterial account of those movements’ local roots make it perhaps the most interpretively significant work of civil rights history ever written. A very close second is Adam Fairclough’s Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972.

I love reading uplifting stories showing how the actions of others can affect our lives, and this emotionally engaging story was a fascinating read.

A dual timeline story, about Mattie and granddaughter Ashlee, it relates how Mattie made an important decision after witnessing Rose Parkes’ refusal to give up her seat. Years later, Ashlee is a young, successful lawyer who also has an important decision to make. She returns to her family home to visit her dying grandmother, Mattie.

As she reads the story her grandmother has written Ashlee realises that it is the real story of her grandmother’s life, and reading it has a big impact on Ashlee’s life and decisions. Beautifully told, with strong, warm characters.

A Government of Our is a richly textured history of the formation of the Confederate States of America replete with high drama and compelling characters. 

This is political history in the grand narrative tradition grounded in excellent research and provocative assessments. Davis renders sharp judgments on his subjects in often pungent prose. 

This is a book to savor and enjoy as the author presents his story in loving detail. Here is a fascinating mix of the personal and the political, the humorous and the sad, the ironic and the bizarre.

Anthony Lewis’s Gideon’s Trumpet may be the most famous journalistic account of a single Supreme Court case, but his Make No Law has the more compelling origin story. A representative of the Committee to Defend Martin Luther King and the Struggle for Freedom in the South walks into The New York Times headquarters to take out an advertisement. When the full-page ad, headlined “Heed Their Rising Voices,” was published, a number of southern officials took issue with how it described their actions with regard to protesters; one of them, Montgomery, Alabama, police commissioner L. B. Sullivan decided to sue the Times for libel. A local all-white jury ruled in Sullivan’s favor, but the U.S. Supreme Court in 1964 reversed the decision, enshrining a high standard for public figures to sue for defamation. Lewis, who covered the case for the Times, delivers an account that only tracks the maturity of… show more.

Although a little older, this remains in my view the best book on the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the heroic period of Dr. King and the student sit-ins. Born and raised in rural Mississippi during that time, Morris tells a rich story of the influence of religion: the songs, prayers, and scriptural references, but also the material resources such as churches to meet in, networks of preachers to spread information, and the conduit for funds to flow from more affluent Black communities to those battling on the frontline during the bloody fight for civil rights.

This surprisingly approachable book is written by a genuine expert in the field. Well before I reached the end, I knew every landmark trait of the preacher would be fully covered. Where other authors such as Michael K. Honey cover King’s relationship to the labor movement with true aplomb, Lischer takes me deeper into the language where I live. Here cadence, delivery, and poetry are explored as expressive modes that empower real listeners to act. This book reminds us that inspiration was required as much as strategy when it came to moving the nation closer to its ideals.     

Walking with the author on his journey from successful African American businessman in Montgomery, Alabama to empowered and enriched Nigerian and Ghana American now living in Accra, Ghana brings the echoes of Dr. King's "dream" to life in the halls of our hearts: we realize that to walk equally with others first requires that we know ourselves, proclaiming proudly who we are and whose we are. Found My People gives us the tools, encouragement, and benefits to do so.

This book will challenge your concept of heritage, delight you with the serendipities of destiny, and inspire you to find your people! I was inspired to extend my DNA search and dig deeper into my heritage because of it.

It is one of the best first-person accounts we have of the adolescent days of the Confederacy in Montgomery, AL. De Leon is a fine writer who provides great pen portraits of the people involved, endless anecdotal detail on political and social life among the founders and their Montgomery hosts, and some penetrating insights into the jealousies and rivalries that helped to cripple their efforts from the outset.

Coleman got very famous, and very rich, from Beulah Land, a trilogy of plantation life in the pre-Civil War South that was variously viewed as a much racier Gone with the Wind or simply dismissed as an interracial soap opera. What a surprise, then, to find he wrote this beautiful coming-of-age story about a sensitive boy who is a budding writer. The novel richly depicts Mark’s life in Alabama and Georgia during the 1930s and early ’40s. We are as elated as he is when he finally finds people who understand him, most notably his teacher, who is the kind of quietly strong woman character all too often overlooked in such a milieu, and equally, the unexpected young man with whom Mark finally finds a romance both exhilarating and heartbreaking.