If You Like...The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Fiction and nonfiction books, CDs, and films selected for this Reading Map to compliment The Help by Kathryn Stockett cover the American civil rights experience primarily from the 1930s through the 1970s.

Fiction With Similar Themes

We Are All Welcome Here by Elizabeth Berg
Set in 1964 in Tupelo, Mississippi, Paige Dunn is a single mom determined to raise her daughter, Diana, even though Paige is paralyzed from the neck down and requires mechanical help to breathe. Helping her is a loyal, fiercely protective and sharp-tongued black caregiver named Peacie.

The Summer We Got Saved by Pat Cunningham Devoto
Tab and Tina Rutland are sisters coming of age in Alabama in the 1960’s. One is proud of her relative’s involvement in the Ku Klux Klan while the other is too interested in makeup and boys to be concerned with history or politics. But when their aunt from California visits and takes them on a trip, they become aware of events going on in the Civil Rights Movement.

Five Smooth Stones by Ann Fairbairn
First published in 1966, this story has continued to captivate readers with its wide-ranging yet intimate portrait of an America sundered by racial conflict. David Champlin is a black man born into poverty in Depression-era New Orleans who makes his way up the ladder of success, only to sacrifice everything to lead his people in the Civil Rights Movement. Sara Kent is the white girl who loves David from the moment she first sees him, and who struggles against his belief that a marriage for them would be wrong in the violent world he has to confront. And the “five smooth stones” are those the biblical David carried against Goliath. By the time this novel comes to its climax of horror, bloodshed, and hope, readers will be convinced that its enduring popularity is fully justified.

Bombingham by Anthony Grooms
As a soldier in Vietnam, Walter, the narrator, is troubled by his lack of emotion as he is surrounded by death. To try to explain his feelings, he looks back to turbulent times during the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham, Alabama, where he and his sister participated in the marches.

Four Spirits by Sena Jeter Naslund
Set in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1960’s, Stella is a college student observing the racial violence in her city. Ultimately moved to action, she decides to teach African-American  high school dropouts with far-reaching consequences. Historical figures blend with fictional characters in this historically accurate story.

Freshwater Road by Denise Nicholas
In the summer of 1964, 19-year-old Celeste Tyree travels from Michigan to Mississippi. There she helps to register voters and witnesses the kind of poverty and racism that caused her father to originally leave the South.

The Way Forward Is With a Broken Heart by Alice Walker
In this collection of short stories, Walker writes about relationships with husbands, friends, lovers, and family members across generations, including writing about her ten-year first marriage to a white civil rights lawyer. She also writes about coming of age in a racist society.

Biography

The Senator and the Sharecropper: The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer. Asch, Christopher Myers. 305.800976 ASC

Malcolm X: The Last Speeches. X, Malcolm.305.896073 X

To the Mountaintop: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Sacred Mission to Save America, 1955-1968 . Burns, Stewart.  323.092 BUR

Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders. Etheridge, Eric. OVERSIZE 323.092 ETH

Make It Plain: Standing Up and Speaking Out . Jordan, Vernon E.  323.092 JOR

Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope, and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed a Nation. Parks, Rosa.  323.092 PAR

Inheritors of the Spirit: Mary White Ovington and the Founding of the NAACP. Wedin, Carolyn.323.196073 WED

First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson. Robinson, Jackie.  796.357092 ROB

On the Bus with Rosa Parks: Poems. Dove, Rita.  811.54 DOV

James Baldwin: Artist on Fire: A Portrait. Weatherby, William J.  818.5409 BAL

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. Gordon-Reed, Annette  973.46092 GOR

Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. Ransby, Barbara.  B BAKER

Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture). Carmichael, Stokely.  B CARMICHAEL

W.E.B. DuBois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963. Lewis, David L.B DUBOIS

Open Wide the Freedom Gates: A Memoir .  Height, Dorothy I.  B HEIGHT

Coretta Scott King: A Biography . McCarty, Laura T.  B KING

Dream Makers, Dream Breakers: The World of Justice Thurgood Marshall. Rowan, Carl Thomas.B MARSHALL

To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells . Bay, Mia.  B WELLS

The Civil Rights Era

At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68. Branch, Taylor.  323.1196 BRA

Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63. Branch, Taylor.323.1196 BRA

Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65. Branch, Taylor.323.1196 BRA

The Civil Rights Movement

She Would Not Be Moved: How We Tell the Story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Kohl, Herbert R.  323.092 KOH

Weary Feet, Rested Souls: A Guided History of the Civil Rights Movement. Davis, Townsend.323.0973 DAV

An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962. Doyle, William.  323.11 DOY

Partners to History: Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and the Civil Rights Movement. Abernathy, Donzaleigh.  323.1196 ABE

The Children. Halberstam, David.323.1196 HAL

On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail. Cobb, Charles E.323.1196073 COB

Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America. Joseph, Peniel E.  323.1196073 JOS

The Shadows of Youth: The Remarkable Journey of the Civil Rights Generation. Lewis, Andrew B.  323.1196073 LEW

We Had Sneakers, They Had Guns: The Kids Who Fought for Civil Rights in Mississippi .  Sugarman, Tracy.  323.1196073 SUG

Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement. Sullivan, Patricia.  973.0496073 SUL

A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution. Nichols, David A.973.921 NIC

Racism

The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation. Roberts, Gene.070.4493058 ROB

Walter White: The Dilemma of Black Identity in America. Dyja, Tom.323.092 DYJ

Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890-2000. Fairclough, Adam.  323.1 FAI

Devil’s Sanctuary: An Eyewitness History of Mississippi Hate Crimes . Alston, Alex A.  323.1196 ALS

At the Elbows of My Elders: One Family’s Journey Toward Civil Rights. Grant, Gail Milissa.  323.1196 GRA

Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South. 323.1196 REM

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow . Wormser, Richard.  323.1196 WOR

Long Overdue: The Politics of Racial Reparations . Henry, Charles P.  323.1196073 HEN   

When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. Katznelson, Ira.  323.1196073 KAT 

Civil Rights and Wrongs: A Memoir of Race and Politics 1944-1994. Ashmore, Harry S. 973.0496073 ASH

Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. McWhorter, Diane.  976.1 MCW

We Are not Afraid: The Story of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney and the Civil Rights Campaign for Mississippi . Cagin, Seth.  976.2063 CAG

CDs

Sing for Freedom [sound recording]: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs.  CD 781.6213 SIN

Voices of the Civil Rights Movement [sound recording]: Black American Freedom Songs, 1960-1966 .  CD 781.6213 VOI

Audio Books

Where Did You Sleep Last Night? [CD]: A Personal History. Senna, Danzy.  AUDIO BOOK 306.846 SEN

April 4, 1968 [CD]: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Death and How It Changed America . Dyson, Michael Eric.  AUDIO BOOK 323.173 DYS

The Fire Next Time [CD]. Baldwin, James.AUDIO BOOK 325.26 BAL

Life Beyond Measure [CD]: Letters to My Great-Granddaughter. Poitier, Sidney.  AUDIO BOOK 791.43028092 POI

DVDs

Great Black Women [DVD] .  305.48896073 GRE

The Two Nations of Black America [DVD]. 305.896073 TWO

Been to the Mountaintop [DVD]. 323 BEE

Sisters of Selma [DVD: Bearing Witness for Change. 323 SIS

Voices of Civil Rights [DVD] .  323 VOI

King [DVD]: Go Beyond the Dream to Discover the Man. 323.092 KIN

Leaving Cleaver [DVD]: Henry Louis Gates Jr. Remembers Eldridge Cleaver .  323.1196 LEA

To Form a More Perfect Union [DVD]: Milestones of the Civil Rights Movement .   323.1196073 TO

The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till [DVD]. 323.1196073 UNT

Little Rock Central [DVD]: 50 Years Later .  379.263 LIT

Citizen Tanouye [DVD].  940.5404 CIT

Murder in Mississippi [DVD]. DVD MUR

St. Charles Public Library

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