We Real Cool (For Further Study)

For Further Study

• Adams, Olive Arnold, Mississippi Exposed and the Full Story of Emmett Till, The Mississippi Regional Council of Negro Leadership, 1956.

  The story of Emmett Till, a black fourteen-year-old who was killed by whites for calling a white woman, “Baby,” is an important one in civil rights history. It is said that the story had a profound effect on Gwendolyn Brooks.

• Albert, Judith Clavir, and Stewart Edward Albert, eds., The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade, New York: Praeger, 1984.

  This anthology consists of essays by the leading lights (Mills, Ginsburg, Malcolm X, etc.,) and on the leading struggles (antiwar, counterculture, feminist) of the 1960s. The volume is introduced by an overview of the 1950s.

• Burk, Robert Fredrick, The Eisenhower Administration and Black Civil Rights, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984.

  Burk exposes the government’s failures regarding civil rights.

• Goldman, Eric F., The Crucial Decade: America, 1945-55, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956.

  Goldman’s history includes material on Truman’s presidency, the end of World War II, the onset of the Cold War, the Korean War, and the Eisenhower Era of Equilibrium.

• Williams, Juan, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-65, New York: Penguin, 1987.

  For a history heavily informed by those who participated in the civil rights struggle, this anthology can’t be beat. Not only does the volume include time lines, quotes, and photos, but there is an excellent PBS companion video series.