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The ReadDown

10 Books to Understand Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Legacy Today

Over five decades after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death, American society is still working towards the dream that he envisioned. These ten essential books shed light on these decades after Dr. King’s life, the Civil Rights movement, and show how his legacy has shaped the past half-century. Learn from the experiences of activists, lawyers, and journalists about the ongoing and necessary work towards racial equality.

  1. 1
    Begin Again Book Cover Picture
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    Begin Again

    by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

    Mixing biography–drawn partially from newly uncovered interviews–with history, memoir, and trenchant analysis of our current moment, Begin Again is Glaude’s attempt, following Baldwin, to bear witness to the difficult truth of race in America today. It is at once a searing exploration that lays bare the tangled web of race, trauma, and memory, and a powerful interrogation of what we all must ask of ourselves in order to call forth a new America.
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    $17.00

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  2. 2
    The Nickel Boys Book Cover Picture
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    The Nickel Boys

    by Colson Whitehead

    As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is “as good as anyone.” For a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, which is a grotesque chamber of horrors. Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold onto Dr. King’s ringing assertion “Throw us in jail and we will still love you.” The tension between Elwood’s ideals and his friend’s skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades.
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  3. 3
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    The Source of Self-Regard

    by Toni Morrison

    Here is Toni Morrison in her own words: a rich gathering of her most important essays and speeches, spanning four decades. These pages give us her searing prayer for the dead of 9/11, her Nobel lecture on the power of language, her searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., her heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. She looks deeply into the fault lines of culture and freedom: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, “black matter(s),” human rights, the artist in society, the Afro-American presence in American literature.
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    $16.95

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  4. 4
    Between the World and Me Book Cover Picture
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    Between the World and Me

    by Ta-Nehisi Coates

    In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.
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    $26.00

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  5. 5
    The Sum of Us Book Cover Picture
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    The Sum of Us

    by Heather McGhee

    Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the financial crisis of 2008 to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a root problem: racism in our politics and policymaking. The Sum of Us is not only a brilliant analysis of how we arrived here but also a heartfelt message, delivered with startling empathy, from a black woman to a multiracial America. It leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game.
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    $18.00

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  6. 6
    Black Is the Body Book Cover Picture
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    Black Is the Body

    by Emily Bernard

    In these twelve deeply personal, connected essays, Bernard details the experience of growing up black in the south with a family name inherited from a white man, surviving a random stabbing at a New Haven coffee shop, marrying a white man from the North and bringing him home to her family, adopting two children from Ethiopia, and living and teaching in a primarily white New England college town. Each of these essays sets out to discover a new way of talking about race and of telling the truth as the author has lived it.
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  7. 7
    Just Mercy (Movie Tie-In Edition) Book Cover Picture
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    Just Mercy

    by Bryan Stevenson

    Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship—and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever. Just Mercy is at once an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyer’s coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice.
    Just Mercy (Movie Tie-In Edition) Book Cover Picture
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    $18.00

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  8. 8
    The Fire Next Time Book Cover Picture
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    The Fire Next Time

    by James Baldwin

    At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin’s early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document from the iconic author of If Beale Street Could Talk and Go Tell It on the Mountain. It consists of two “letters,” written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. Described by The New York Times Book Review as “sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle…all presented in searing, brilliant prose,” The Fire Next Time stands as a classic of literature.
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    $22.00

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  9. 9
    Stony the Road Book Cover Picture
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    Stony the Road

    by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

    The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked “a new birth of freedom” in Lincoln’s America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s America? In this new book, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. seeks to answer that question in a history that moves from the Reconstruction Era to the “nadir” of the African-American experience under Jim Crow, through to World War I and the Harlem Renaissance.
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    $20.00

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  10. 10
    Four Hundred Souls Book Cover Picture
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    Four Hundred Souls

    by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain

    Four Hundred Souls is a unique one-volume “community” history of African Americans. The editors, Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, have assembled ninety brilliant writers, each of whom takes on a five-year period of that four-hundred-year span. The writers explore their periods through a variety of techniques: historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and fiery polemics. They approach history from various perspectives: through the eyes of towering historical icons or the untold stories of ordinary people; through places, laws, and objects.
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    $20.00

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