Middle School / High School | Adult

Here are biographies of key figures in the Civil Rights Movement for middle school, high school, and adults. For early childhood and elementary books, check out our Black history booklist. For more resources on the Civil Rights Movement, visit our Civil Rights Teaching website.

Visit Teaching for Change's Civil Rights Teaching website for more resources.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

By Malcolm X

Bayard Rustin: Behind the Scenes of the Civil Rights Movement

By Jim Haskins

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

By Phillip Hoose

Coming of Age in Mississippi: The Classic Autobiography of a Young Black Girl in the Rural South

By Anne Moody

The Girl from the Tar Paper School: Barbara Rose Johns and the Advent of the Civil Rights Movement

By Teri Kanefield

Jessie de La Cruz: Profile of a United Farm Worker

By Gary Soto

The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World

By John Carlos and Dave Zirin, foreword by Cornel West

The Legendary Miss Lena Horne

By Carole Boston Weatherford

Man on a Mission: James Meredith and the Battle of Ole Miss

By Aram Goudsouzian and Bill Murray (Illustrator)

March Forward, Girl: From Young Warrior to Little Rock Nine

By Melba Pattillo Beals, Frank Morrison (Illustrator)

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

By Jeanne Theoharis and Brandy Colbert

Sing and Shout: The Mighty Voice of Paul Robeson

By Susan Goldman Rubin

Sing It!: A Biography of Pete Seeger

By Meryl Danziger

Streetcar to Justice

By Amy Hill Hearth

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

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

By Melba Pattillo Beals

All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw

By Theodore Rosengarten

Buses Are a Comin': Memoir of a Freedom Rider

By Charles Person with Richard Rooker

Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Vision (Second Edition)

By Barbara Ransby

Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson

By Barbara Ransby

Fire in My Soul

By Joan Steinau Lester, Eleanor Holmes Norton (With), Coretta Scott King (Foreword by)

Freedom's Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark

By Katherine Mellen Charron

The Long Haul: An Autobiography

By Myles Horton, Herbert R. Kohl (With), Judith Kohl (With)

Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr

By Michael Vinson Williams, Michael Vinson Williams

Mississippi Harmony: Memoirs of a Freedom Fighter

By Winson Hudson, Constance Curry, Derrick Bell (Foreword by)

Montgomery Bus Boycott: Women Who Started It

By Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, David J. Garrow (Contribution by)

The Movement Made Us: A Father, a Son, and the Legacy of a Freedom Ride

By David J. Dennis Jr. and David J Dennis Sr.

Open Wide the Freedom Gates: A Memoir

By Dorothy Height

Outside the Magic Circle

By Virginia Foster Durr, Hollinger F. Barnard (Editor), Studs Terkel (Foreword by)

The Passion of My Times: An Advocate's Fifty-Year Journey in the Civil Rights Movement

By William L. Taylor

Race Man Selected Works, 1960-2015

By Julian Bond

Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael

By Stokely Carmichael, with Michael Ekwueme Thelwell, and Introduction by John Edgar Wideman

Ready from Within: Septima Clark and the Civil Rights Movement

By Cynthia Stokes Brown (Editor), Septima Poinsette Clark

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

By Jeanne Theoharis

Root and Branch: Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the Struggle to End Segregation

By Rawn Jr. James

The Rose That Grew from Concrete

By Tupac Shakur

A Shining Thread of Hope

By Darlene Clark Hine, Hine Thompson, Kathleen Thompson

Soldier's Story: Revolutionary Writings by a New Afrikan Anarchist

By Kuwasi Balagoon and edited by Matt Meyers and Karl Kersplebedeb 

Solitary: A Biography

By Albert Woodfox

Soul on Ice

By Eldridge Cleaver

Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One Family's Journey *

By Dan Berger

The Struggle Is Eternal: Gloria Richardson and Black Liberation

By Joseph R. Fitzgerald

Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South

By Catherine Fosl

This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer

By Kay Mills

Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary

By Juan Williams

Unbought and Unbossed

By Shirley Chisholm, Shola Lynch (Afterword by), Donna Brazile (Foreword by)

Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America

By Keisha N. Blain

Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement

By John Lewis, Michael D'Orso

Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom

By Sonja D. Williams

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