Free at Last: The Struggle for Civil Rights, Student Anthology

How do we achieve the ideal of equal rights for all? This anthology from the Literature & Thought series contains literature that challenges the reader, promotes critical thinking, and encourages independent exploration of themes and issues related to this topic.

Prologue

Alabama Centennial Naomi Madgett

Creating Context

“Until Justice Rolls Down Like Waters” • The Faces of Civil Rights • Chronology of the Civil Rights Movement • Concept Vocabulary

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Cluster One: What Are the Roots of the Civil Rights Movement?

Thinking Skill: Analyzing

Ku Klux (poem)

Langston Hughes

We Wear the Mask (poem)

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Booker T. and W. E. B. (poem)

Dudley Randall

Incident (poem)

Countee Cullen

On Being Crazy (vignette)

W. E. B. Du Bois

Surviving Jim Crow (autobiography)

From Uncle Tom’s Children, Richard Wright

The Revolt of the Evil Fairies (short story)

Ted Poston

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Cluster Two: 1954–1961: What Were the Critical Moments That Sparked the Civil Rights Movement?

Thinking Skill: Evaluating Cause and Effect

Brown v. Board of Education (U.S. Supreme Court decision)

Earl Warren

Emmett Till, 1955 (interviews)

Henry Hampton

Rosa Parks (article)

Rita Dove

Integration (autobiography)

Melba Pattillo Beals

Bigger Than a Hamburger (essay)

Harvard Sitkoff

1961: The Freedom Rides (essay)

Pete Seeger and Bob Reiser

Girl Held Without Bail (poem)

Margaret Walker

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Cluster Three: 1962–1968: What Resistance Did the Civil Rights Movement Meet?

Thinking Skill: Comparing and Contrasting

Inaugural Address (speech)

Governor George C. Wallace

Birmingham (speech)

President John F. Kennedy

I Have a Dream (speech)

Martin Luther King Jr.

Birmingham 1963 (poem)

Raymond R. Patterson

Liars Don’t Qualify (short story)

Junius Edwards

Tomorrow Is for Our Martyrs (autobiography)

James Farmer

Address to a Meeting in New York, 1964 (speech)

Malcolm X

Revolutionary Dreams (poem)

Nikki Giovanni

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Cluster Four: Thinking on Your Own

Thinking Skill: Synthesizing

An American Problem (essay)

Wim Coleman

The Power of One (memorium)

Staff of People magazine

I Was Born at the Wrong Time (poem)

Angela Shelf Medearis

The Church of the Almighty White Man (article)

Angie Cannon and Warren Cohen

Little Rock Warriors Thirty Years Later (autobiography)

Melba Pattillo Beals