Library

A History of US: All the People (1945-Present)

Joy Hakim

People call it "post-war," but All the People covers a period in U.S. history that features battles of another kind-from Cold War combat overseas to struggles for equality at home to learning to live with the threat of terrorism on U.S. soil. During these years, the United States began to be a nation for all its people, outlawing school segregation, protesting war in Vietnam, and campaigning for equal rights for women. From Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to seamstress Rosa Parks, extraordinary individuals led us back to the ideals espoused by the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. But mostly-as it always has been in the United States-it was ordinary citizens who marched and voted and hoped and dreamed and made things happen. All the People includes the events of September 11, 2001, and a discussion of how many aspects of the terrorist attacks have brought to the forefront the qualities that keep America strong: representative democracy, freedom of speech and press, and, especially in the face of religious totalitarianism, the basic freedom of religious tolerance.

Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case

Chris Crowe

The kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till is famous as a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement. Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old Black teenager from Chicago, was visiting family in a small town in Mississippi during the summer of 1955. Likely showing off to friends, Emmett allegedly whistled at a white woman. Three days later his brutally beaten body was found floating in the Tallahatchie River. The extreme violence of the crime put a national spotlight on the Jim Crow ways of the South, and many Americans-Black and white-were further outraged at the speedy trial of the white murderers. Although the two white men were tried and acquitted by an all-white jury, they later bragged publicly about the crime. It was a galvanizing moment for Black leaders and ordinary citizens, including such activists as Rosa Parks. In clear, vivid detail Chris Crowe investigates the before-and-aftermath of the crime, as well as the dramatic court trial, and places it into the context of the nascent Civil Rights Movement.

With lively narrative and abundantly illustrated with forty fascinating contemporaneous photographs, this impressive work of nonfiction brings fresh insight to the case in a manner that will be accessible and eye-opening for teenagers and adults alike.

Separate But Not Equal: The Dream and the Struggle

Jim Haskins

A moving history of the struggle of African-Americans for equal education rights from colonial times to the present, from the award-winning author of over eighty nonfiction books for young readers.

The Persian Gulf War

Andrew Santella

Describes Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, and the resulting Persian Gulf War.