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In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation--that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes it clear that it was de jure segregation--the...

"Saoirse Sorkova survives on lies. As a soldier-in-training at the most prestigious barracks in the kingdom, she lies about being a siren to avoid execution. At night, working as an assassin for a dangerous group of mercenaries, Saoirse lies about her true identity. And to her family, Saoirse tells the biggest lie of all: that she can control her siren powers and doesn't struggle constantly against an impulse to kill. As the top trainee in her class,...

"Public schools are among America's greatest achievements in modern history, yet from the earliest days of tax-supported education -- today a sector with an estimated budget of over half a billion dollars -- there have been intractable tensions tied to race and poverty. Now, in an era characterized by levels of school segregation the country has not seen since the mid-twentieth century, cultural critic and American studies professor Noliwe Rooks provides...

Discusses the historic Supreme Court case involving a Black man who boarded a "whites-only" car in New Orleans in 1982.

It's hardly a secret that mobility has always been limited, if not impossible, for African Americans. Before the Civil War, masters confined their slaves to their property, while free Black people found themselves regularly stopped, questioned, and even kidnapped. Restrictions on movement before emancipation carried over, in different forms, into Reconstruction and beyond; for most of the twentieth century, many white Americans felt blithely comfortable...

"Following the Civil War, the Reconstruction era raised a new question to those in power in the US: Should African Americans, so many of them former slaves, be granted the right to vote? In a bitter partisan fight over the legislature and Constitution, the answer eventually became yes, though only after two constitutional amendments, two Reconstruction Acts, two Civil Rights Acts, three Enforcement Acts, the impeachment of a president, and an army...

"In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award-winning The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is...

"Before Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin made the same choice. She insisted on standing up--or in her case, sitting down--for what was right, and in doing so, fought for equality, fairness, and justice." -- Amazon.com.

Chronicling the riveting history and personal experiences, at once liberating and challenging, harrowing and inspiring, deeply revealing and profoundly transforming, of African Americans on the road from the advent of the automobile through the seismic changes of the 1960s and beyond, it explores the deep background of a recent phrase rooted in realities that have been an indelible part of the African American experience for hundreds of years.

"Though not as widely known as other basketball legends, hall-of-famer Elgin Baylor was one of the game's all-time greatest players--an innovative athlete, team player, and quiet force for change. A member of the early, scrappy NBA and one of the first professional African American players, Elgin (b. 1934) played in the late 1950s and early 1960s for the Minneapolis/Los Angeles Lakers, taking risks on and off the court. Known for his acrobatic style...