Starting the Conversation: Adult Nonfiction

In our commitment to serve our community and foster the pursuit of knowledge, we offer these resources to help begin important conversations.

Showing 1 - 13 of 13  There are a total of 82 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "The blood of Emmett Till"
Star rating for The blood of Emmett Till
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
"In 1955, white men in the Mississippi Delta lynched a fourteen-year-old from Chicago named Emmett Till. His murder was part of a wave of white terrorism in the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court decision that declared public school segregation unconstitutional ... But what actually happened to Emmett Till--not the icon of injustice but the flesh-and-blood boy? Part detective story, part political history, [this book] draws on a wealth of new evidence,...
Book cover for "The color of law"
Star rating for The color of law
Average Rating:
4.8 stars
Description:
Rothstein examines the idea "that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation--that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, [he argues] that it was de jure segregation--the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments--that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day"--Amazon.com....
Book cover for "The family tree"
Star rating for The family tree
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
The provocative true account of the hanging of four black people by a white lynch mob in 1912--written by the great-granddaughter of the sheriff charged with protecting them.
Book cover for "In search of our mothers' gardens"
Star rating for In search of our mothers' gardens
Average Rating:
4 stars
Book cover for "Jackson, 1964"
Star rating for Jackson, 1964
Book cover for "The lynching"
Star rating for The lynching
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
Describes the brutal killing of a young black man and subsequent conviction of two Klansmen in 1981 Alabama and the civil suit that exposed the true motives and philosophy of the organization and ultimately bankrupted them.
Book cover for "Negroland"
Star rating for Negroland
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An extraordinary look at privilege, discrimination, and the fallacy of post-racial America by the renowned Pulitzer Prize–winning cultural critic

Jefferson takes us into an insular and discerning society: “I call it Negroland,” she writes, “because I still find ‘Negro’ a word of wonders, glorious and terrible.”
 
Margo...
Book cover for "The other Wes Moore"
Star rating for The other Wes Moore
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
Traces the parallel lives of two youths with the same name in the same community, describing how the author grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar and promising business leader while his counterpart suffered a life of violence and imprisonment.
Book cover for "The second coming of the KKK"
Star rating for The second coming of the KKK
Book cover for "The song and the silence"
Star rating for The song and the silence
Description:
"'Have to keep that smile,' Booker Wright said in the 1966 NBC documentary Mississippi: A Self-Portrait. At the time, Wright spent his evenings waiting tables for whites at a local restaurant and his mornings running his own business. The ripple effect from his remarks would cement Booker as a civil rights icon because he did the unthinkable: before a national audience, Wright described what life truly was like for the black people of Greenwood, Mississippi"--Amazon.com....
Book cover for "The warmth of other suns"
Star rating for The warmth of other suns
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America.
Book cover for "What truth sounds like"
Star rating for What truth sounds like
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
Examines the events surrounding the 1963 meeting between Robert F. Kennedy and James Balwin in New York City, as well as its impact on race relations in the United States from then to now.
Book cover for "White guilt"
Star rating for White guilt