Elementary | Middle and Young Adult | Adult | Teachers

For more on Voting Rights, visit Zinn Education Project and Civil Rights Teaching for free downloadable lessons and recommended resources. In particular, see Who Gets to Vote? Teaching About the Struggle for Voting Rights in the United States.

See more recommended titles: Civil Rights Teaching: SNCC, Civil Rights for the classroom, Mississippi

Titles with reviews on this site are noted with an asterisk(*).

Teaching for Change carefully selects the best multicultural and social justice books for children, young adults, and educators. Learn about our criteria for selecting titles. Feedback on these lists and suggestions for additional titles are welcome. Book titles on SocialJusticeBooks.org are linked to Powells.com (an independent, unionized bookstore) and/or Bookshop (an indie bookstore platform). A small percentage from book sales through these links goes to Teaching for Change.

Ballots for Belva: The True Story of a Woman's Race for the Presidency

By Sudipta Bardhan Quallen, Courtney A Martin

Belle, the Last Mule at Gee's Bend: A Civil Rights Story *

By Calvin Alexander Ramsey, Bettye Stroud, John Holyfield (Illustrator)

The Day Gogo Went to Vote

By Elinor Batezat Sisulu

Evicted! The Struggle for the Right to Vote

By Alice Faye Duncan and Charly Palmer (Illustrator)

Freedom School, Yes!

By Amy Littlesugar and Floyd Cooper

Granddaddy’s Turn – A Journey to the Ballot Box

By Michael S. Bandy and Eric Stein

Lillian’s Right to Vote

By Jonah Winter and Shane W. Evans

Papa’s Mark

By Gwendolyn Battle-Lavert

Selma, Lord, Selma: Girlhood Memories of the Civil Rights Days

By  Sheyann Webb, Rachel West Nelson, and Frank Sikora

The Teachers March! How Selma's Teachers Changed History *

By Sandra Neil Wallace, Rich Wallace, and Charly Palmer (Illustrator)

Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: The Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement*

By Carole Boston Weatherford

Because They Marched

By Russell Freedman

Letters from Mississippi

Edited by Elizabeth Sutherland Martinez, Introduction by Julian Bond

Lifting as We Climb: Black Women's Battle for the Ballot Box

By Evette Dionne

One Person, No Vote (YA edition): How Not All Voters Are Treated Equally

By Carol Anderson, Tonya Bolden

SNCC: The New Abolitionists

By Howard Zinn

Stella by Starlight

By Sharon M Draper

Stolen Justice

By Lawrence Goldstone

The Voting Booth *

By Brandy Colbert

Sofia Valdez and the Vanishing Vote

By Andrea Beaty and David Roberts (Illustrator)

To Write in the Light of Freedom

Edited by William Sturkey and Jon N. Hale

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

African American Women and the Vote, 1837–1965

By Ann D. Gordon (Editor), Joyce A. Berkman (Editor), John H. Bracey (Editor)

Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt

By Hasan Kwame Jeffries

Count Them One by One: Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote

By Gordon A. Martin, Jr.

The Fight to Vote

By Michael Waldman

Freedom Summer

By Bruce Watson

Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

By Ari Berman

I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle

By Charles M. Payne

Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi

By John Dittmer

One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy

By Carol Anderson, Dick Durbin (Foreword by)

The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States

By Alexander Keyssar

Risking Everything: A Freedom Summer Reader*

By Michael Edmonds

Suffrage Reconstructed: Gender, Race, and Voting Rights in the Civil War Era

By Laura Free

Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America

By Gilda R. Daniels

Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All

By Martha S. Jones

Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote

Susan Ware

Lessons from Freedom Summer: Ordinary People Building Extraordinary Movements

By Kathy Emery, Linda Reid Gold, Sylvia Braselmann

Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching: A Resource Guide for Classrooms and Communities

By Deborah Menkart (Editor)

Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement

Edited by Hasan Kwame Jeffries

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