Remember that at least 3 of your sources need to come from this list!
Please download individual chapters or use the read online. Do not use the "download full book" for offline reading. It will prompt you to 'check out' the book for 7 or 14 days. If you this, you may be blocking others from access the book doing that time period.
Pillar of Fire by
From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, the second part of his epic trilogy on the American Civil Rights Movement. In the second volume of his three-part history, a monumental trilogy that began with Parting the Waters, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Taylor Branch portrays the Civil Rights Movement at its zenith, recounting the climactic struggles as they commanded the national stage.
Parting the Waters by
In volume one of his America in the King Years, Pulitzer Prize winner Taylor Branch gives a masterly account of the American civil rights movement. Hailed as the most masterful story ever told of the American civil rights movement, Parting the Waters is destined to endure for generations. Moving from the fiery political baptism of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the corridors of Camelot where the Kennedy brothers weighed demands for justice against the deceptions of J. Edgar Hoover, here is a vivid tapestry of America, torn and finally transformed by a revolutionary struggle unequaled since the Civil War. Taylor Branch provides an unsurpassed portrait of King's rise to greatness and illuminates the stunning courage and private conflict, the deals, maneuvers, betrayals, and rivalries that determined history behind closed doors, at boycotts and sit-ins, on bloody freedom rides, and through siege and murder. Epic in scope and impact, Branch's chronicle definitively captures one of the nation's most crucial passages.
At Canaan's Edge by
At Canaan's Edge concludes America in the King Years, a three-volume history that will endure as a masterpiece of storytelling on American race, violence, and democracy. Pulitzer Prize-winner and bestselling author Taylor Branch makes clear in this magisterial account of the civil rights movement that Martin Luther King, Jr., earned a place next to James Madison and Abraham Lincoln in the pantheon of American history. In At Canaan's Edge, King and his movement stand at the zenith of America's defining story, one decade into an epic struggle for the promises of democracy. Branch opens with the authorities' violent suppression of a voting-rights march in Alabama on March 7, 1965. The quest to cross Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge engages the conscience of the world, strains the civil rights coalition, and embroils King in negotiations with all three branches of the U.S. government. The marches from Selma coincide with the first landing of large U.S. combat units in South Vietnam. The escalation of the war severs the cooperation of King and President Lyndon Johnson after a collaboration that culminated in the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. After Selma, young pilgrims led by Stokely Carmichael take the movement into adjacent Lowndes County, Alabama, where not a single member of the black majority has tried to vote in the twentieth century. Freedom workers are murdered, but sharecroppers learn to read, dare to vote, and build their own political party. Carmichael leaves in frustration to proclaim his famous black power doctrine, taking the local panther ballot symbol to become an icon of armed rebellion. Also after Selma, King takes nonviolence into Northern urban ghettoes. Integrated marches through Chicago expose hatreds and fears no less virulent than the Mississippi Klan's, but King's 1966 settlement with Mayor Richard Daley does not gain the kind of national response that generated victories from Birmingham and Selma. We watch King overrule his advisers to bring all his eloquence into dissent from the Vietnam War. We watch King make an embattled decision to concentrate his next campaign on a positive compact to address poverty. We reach Memphis, the garbage workers' strike, and King's assassination. Parting the Waters provided an unsurpassed portrait of King's rise to greatness, beginning with the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and ending with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. In Pillar of Fire, theologians and college students braved the dangerous Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964 as Malcolm X raised a militant new voice for racial separatism. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed segregation by race and mandated equal opportunity for women. From the pinnacle of winning the Nobel Peace Prize, King willed himself back to "the valley" of jail in his daunting Selma campaign. At Canaan's Edge portrays King at the height of his moral power even as his worldly power is waning. It shows why his fidelity to freedom and nonviolence makes him a defining figure long beyond his brilliant life and violent end.
April 4 1968 by
On April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m., while he was standing on a balcony at a Memphis hotel, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and fatally wounded. Only hours earlier King ended his final speech with the words, "I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight, that we as a people will get to the Promised Land." Acclaimed public intellectual and best-selling author Michael Eric Dyson examines how King fought, and faced, his own death, and how America can draw on his legacy in the twenty-first century. April 4, 1968 celebrates the leadership of Dr. King, and challenges America to renew its commitment to his vision.
Where do we go from here: Chaos or community? by 
Stride toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story by 
King: A biography by 
King's Dream by 
Martin and Malcolm and America by
James Cone cuts through the superficial assessments of King and Malcolm as polar opposites to reveal two men whose visions were complementary and moving towards convergence.
Bearing the Cross by
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize: The definitive biography of Martin Luther King Jr. In this monumental account of the life of Martin Luther King Jr., professor and historian David Garrow traces King's evolution from young pastor who spearheaded the 1955-56 bus boycott of Montgomery, Alabama, to inspirational leader of America's civil rights movement. Based on extensive research and more than seven hundred interviews, with subjects including Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, and Coretta Scott King, Garrow paints a multidimensional portrait of a charismatic figure driven by his strong moral obligation to lead--and of the toll this calling took on his life. Bearing the Cross provides a penetrating account of King's spiritual development and his crucial role at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, whose protest campaigns in Birmingham and Selma, Alabama, led to enactment of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. This comprehensive yet intimate study reveals the deep sense of mission King felt to serve as an unrelenting crusader against prejudice, inequality, and violence, and his willingness to sacrifice his own life on behalf of his beliefs. Written more than twenty-five years ago, Bearing the Cross remains an unparalleled examination of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and the legacy of the civil rights movement.
Why We Can't Wait by
Dr. King s best-selling account of the civil rights movement in Birmingham during the spring and summer of 1963 In 1963, Birmingham, Alabama, was perhaps the most racially segregated city in the United States, but the campaign launched by Fred Shuttlesworth, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and others demonstrated to the world the power of nonviolent direct action. Often applauded as King s most incisive and eloquent book, "Why We Can t Wait "recounts the Birmingham campaign in vivid detail, while underscoring why 1963 was such a crucial year for the civil rights movement. King examines the history of the civil rights struggle and the tasks that future generations must accomplish to bring about full equality. The book also includes the extraordinary Letter from Birmingham Jail, which King wrote in April of 1963."
Spring 2020: The library does have a limited ability to scan chapters from these books to send to you, but you need to be able to identify a particular chapter either by title or page numbers. We usually won't be able to do more than one chapter per book, because of copyright issues. It may also take several days to get the requested chapter, as we only have staff entering the building two days per week to scan.
To make a request to get a chapter scanned:
Martin Luther King, Jr.: The making of a mind by 
The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader by
The most comprehensive anthology of primary sources available, spanning the entire history of the American civil rights movement. A record of one of the greatest and most turbulent movements of this century, The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader is essential for anyone interested in learning how far the American civil rights movements has come and how far it has to go. Included are the Supreme Court's Brown vs Board of Education decision in its entirety; speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr., and his famous "Letter from Birmingham City Jail"; an interview with Rosa Parks; selections from Malcolm X Speaks; Black Panther Bobby Seale's Seize the Time; Ralph Abernathy's controversial And the Walls Came Tumbling Down; a piece by Herman Badillo on the infamous Attica prison uprising; addresses by Harold Washington, Jesse Jackson, Nelson Mandel, and much more. "An important volume for students and professionals who wish to grasp the basic nature of the civil rights movement and how it changed America in fundamental ways." --Aldon Morris, Northwestern University
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr by
With knowledge, spirit, good humor, and passion, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. brings to life a remarkable man whose thoughts and actions speak to our most burning contemporary issues and still inspire the desires, hopes, and dreams of us all. Written in his own words, this history-making autobiography is Martin Luther King: the mild-mannered, inquisitive child and student who chafed under and eventually rebelled against segregation; the dedicated young minister who continually questioned the depths of his faith and the limits of his wisdom; the loving husband and father who sought to balance his family's needs with those of a growing, nationwide movement; and the reflective, world-famous leader who was fired by a vision of equality for people everywhere. Relevant and insightful, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. offers King's seldom disclosed views on some of the world's greatest and most controversial figures: John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Lyndon B. Johnson, Mahatma Gandhi, and Richard Nixon. It also paints a rich and moving portrait of a people, a time, and a nation in the face of powerful change. Finally, it shows how everyday Americans from all walks of life confronted themselves, each other, and the burden of the past-and how their fears and courage helped shape our future.
I May Not Get There with You by
Michael Eric Dyson, former welfare father, Princeton Ph.D. and Baptist preacher, reassesses the legacy of Martin Luther King in the years since his death. A legacy, he argues, which has been misappropriated by groups ranging from white conservatives, black church leaders to advertisers and even the King family. Dyson brings alive a true revolutionary, a hero willing to sacrifice his reputation for the sake of the poor, a Ph.D. willing to roll up his sleeves and work for justice, a prince of the black pulpit willing to go to gaol for his beliefs. He rescues from history a man who is as important today as he was in the 60's, a man as radical as Malcolm X, who has as much in common with the rap artists and church leaders of today. Unafraid to confront King's personal life, Dyson defends King from the forces of historical amnesia, in a book that is ultimately as moving as it is controversial.
Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.: His life and crusade in pictures by
This magnificent photographic biography dramatically depicts a hero's journey by gathering together the most important photographs taken of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr. by 
Walking with the Wind by
The award-winning national bestseller, Walking with the Wind, is one of our most important records of the American civil rights movement. Told by John Lewis, who Cornel West calls a "national treasure," this is a gripping first-hand account of the fight for civil rights and the courage it takes to change a nation. In 1957, a teenaged boy named John Lewis left a cotton farm in Alabama for Nashville, the epicenter of the struggle for civil rights in America. Lewis's adherence to nonviolence guided that critical time and established him as one of the movement's most charismatic and courageous leaders. Lewis's leadership in the Nashville Movement--a student-led effort to desegregate the city of Nashville using sit-in techniques based on the teachings of Gandhi--set the tone for major civil rights campaigns of the 1960s. Lewis traces his role in the pivotal Selma marches, Bloody Sunday, and the Freedom Rides. Inspired by his mentor, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Lewis's vision and perseverance altered history. In 1986, he ran and won a congressional seat in Georgia, and remains in office to this day, continuing to enact change. The late Edward M. Kennedy said of Lewis, "John tells it like it was...Lewis spent most of his life walking against the wind of the times, but he was surely walking with the wind of history."
Voice of Deliverance by
Martin Luther King Jr.'s words defined, mobilized, and embodied much of the American civil rights movement, crystallizing the hope and demand for racial justice in America. His powerful sermons and speeches were unique in their ability to unite blacks and whites in the quest for reform. In the first full-length study of King's language, Keith D. Miller explores his words to find the intellectual roots, spiritual resonances, and actual sources of the speeches and essays that continue to reverberate in America's mind and conscience. Miller argues that King's skillful borrowing and blending of the black oral and white written traditions was in fact the key to his language and to his effectiveness. It made his message of hope and deliverance accessible to all people and enabled blacks and whites to move in harmony to action and commitment.
Let the Trumpet Sound by
Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award Winner of the Christopher Award A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year "Drawing on interviews with those who knew King, previously unutilized material at Presidential libraries, and the holdings of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center in Atlanta, Mr. Oates has written the most comprehensive account of King's life yet published. ... He displays a remarkable understanding of King's individual role in the civil rights movement ... Oates's biography helps us appreciate how sorely King is missed." --Eric Foner, New York Times Book Review By the acclaimed biographer of Abraham Lincoln, Nat Turner, and John Brown, Stephen B. Oates's prizewinning Let the Trumpet Sound is the definitive one-volume life of Martin Luther King, Jr. This brilliant examination of the great civil rights icon and the movement he led provides a lasting portrait of a man whose dream shaped American history.
We have even more ebooks about Dr. King. Here is a link to a catalog search I set up that is already limited to online books.
Before you start searching-- take a moment to lock the 2 limiters I set into place (so they don't come undone). Find them at the top of the left-hand column. Hover over each until each until the padlock icon appears, then click it. When you are done, both should show a closed blue padlock.
Once you have locked the limiters, you can adjust the search terms in the search box to better match your particular topic.
Neither of the databases listed below has full text of every article. If you don't see a PDF icon, look for a link that says "check availability." It may be able to link you to the article in another database. If we don't have access to an article, you can request a copy through our Interlibrary Loan service.
When searching the library's databases, you may find articles you want that we do not have access to. You can get them for free through a service called interlibrary loan, and it usually only takes one or two days.
1. Instead of a link to a PDF below the article, you will see a link called check availability.
2. If we have the full text,the page that opens will provide a link under the "View It" heading.
3. If we don't own the full text, you can access our interlibrary loan system for articles, called ILLiad, by logging into the system using your WCU email address and password. Look for the link on the yellow bar in the middle of the page.
4. Once you log in, you will see the link to go to ILLiad.
5. If it is your first time logging into the system, it may ask you some questions about your delivery preferences.
6. The system will try to fill in the required blanks with the relevant information about the article. Double check to make sure that all the required blanks are filled. If not, go back to the tab with the article info to cut and paste the other required info.
