In the United States, the fight to secure full civil rights for African American people has endured for centuries. The movement has included many voices, among them, working people, charismatic activists, musicians and artists, the LGBTQIA community, veterans, suburbanites, and elected officials. Moving from the labor struggles of the 1930s to the sit-ins and boycotts of midcentury, and the Black Lives Matter protests of today, this expansive volume brings together first-person accounts, political documents and speeches, and historical photographs from each region of the country.

Designed for use in courses and engaging for general readers, this new compilation is the most diverse, most inclusive, and most comprehensive resource available for teaching and learning about the civil rights movement. With chronological and geographical depth, The New Civil Rights Movement Reader addresses a range of key topics, including youth activism, regional and local freedom struggles, voting rights, economic inequality, gender, sexuality, and culture, and the movement’s global reach.

TRACI PARKER is associate professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s.

MARCIA WALKER-MCWILLIAMS is executive director of the Black Metropolis Research Consortium and author of Reverend Addie Wyatt: Faith and the Fight for Labor, Gender, and Racial Equality.

“Including speeches, photographs, pamphlets, interviews, reports, and manifestos, this reader captures the visions and voices of charismatic leaders and everyday people. It reminds us that the civil rights movement was never just about ‘civil rights’ but culminated in today’s capacious demands for peace, justice, and human rights.”—Martha Biondi, author of To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City and The Black Revolution on Campus

“The New Civil Rights Movement Reader is the pedagogical tool that many of us have been waiting for! Finally, educators have the major organizers, organizations, and documents of the long civil rights movement at their fingertips in order to help students to challenge conventional understandings of movement leaders, thinkers, and strategies.”—Ashley Farmer, author of Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era

“In a world of rapidly changing headlines and a cacophony of digital distractions and unchecked opinions, Parker and McWilliams return us to the sources to quiet the noise in order to hear from those who walked the walk for freedom.”—Françoise N. Hamlin, author of Crossroads at Clarksdale: The Black Freedom Struggle in the Mississippi Delta after World War II 

“This wonderful volume will help to reshape how we understand, and teach, the civil rights movement. For its impressive chronological scope and wide geographic range, The New Civil Rights Movement Reader has no parallel.”—Jason Sokol, author of All Eyes Are Upon Us: Race and Politics from Boston to Brooklyn and The Heavens Might Crack: The Death and Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

“[This book] is an impressive, high value, and unreservedly recommended addition to . . . American History and Race Relations collections, as well as supplemental African-American History curriculum studies lists.”—The American History Shelf