Middle Nonfiction | Middle Fiction and Poetry

Here are some of the titles we recommend for teaching about the Civil Rights Movement. More books and resources on related social movements and the long history of struggles for civil rights in the U.S. can be found at the Zinn Education Project and the Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching sites.

Booklists also available for Elementary and High School.

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

By Phillip Hoose

Freedom's Children *

By Ellen S. Levine

Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott *

By Russell Freedman

Jessie de La Cruz: Profile of a United Farm Worker

By Gary Soto

Ida B. Wells: Let the Truth Be Told

By Walter Dean Myers, Bonnie Christensen (Illustrator)

The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement

By Taylor Branch

Like A Mighty Stream: The March On Washington

By Patrik Henry Bass

Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don't You Grow Weary

By Elizabeth Partridge

Mighty Justice: The Untold Story of Civil Rights Trailblazer Dovey Johnson Roundtree

By Dovey Johnson Roundtree and Katie McCabe

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks: Young Readers Edition *

By Jeanne Theoharis and Brandy Colbert

Remember: The Journey to School Integration

By Toni Morrison

Risking Everything: A Freedom Summer Reader*

By Michael Edmonds (Editor)

Separate No More: The Long Road to Brown v. Board of Education *

By Lawrence Goldstone

Students on Strike: Jim Crow, Civil Rights, Brown, and Me

By John A. Stokes, Lois Wolfe (With), Herman Viola

Tell All the Children Our Story: Memories and Mementos of Being Young and Black in America

By Tonya Bolden

There Comes A Time: The Struggle For Civil Rights

By Milton Meltzer

Troublemaker for Justice The Story of Bayard Rustin the Man Behind the March on Washington*

By Jacqueline Houtman, Walter Naegle, Michael G. Long

Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March

By Lynda Blackmon Lowery
Teaching Story from a D.C. Educator: Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom

Twelve Days in May: Freedom Ride 1961

By Larry Dane Brimner

Warriors Don't Cry: The Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High

By Melba Pattillo Beals

We've Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children's March

By Cynthia Levinson

We Shall Overcome

By Stuart Stotts, Terrance Cummings, Pete Seeger

Witnesses to Freedom: Young People Who Fought for Civil Rights

By Belinda Rochelle

And We Rise: The Civil Rights Movement in Poems

By Erica Martin

Freedom Songs

By Yvette Moore

My Mother the Cheerleader

By Robert Sharenow

One Crazy Summer

By Rita Williams-Garcia

Revolution

By Deborah Wiles

The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano

By Sonia Manzano

The Rock and the River *

By Kekla Magoon

Stella by Starlight

By Sharon M. Draper

Sylvia & Aki*

By Winifred Conkling

A Thousand Never Evers

By Shana Burg

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