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Hand in Hand presents the stories of ten men from different eras in American history, organized chronologically to provide a scope from slavery to the modern day. The stories are punctuated with dynamic full color portraits and spot illustrations by two-time Caldecott Honor winner and multiple Coretta Scott King Book Award recipient Brian Pinkney. Backmatter includes a civil rights timeline, sources, and further reading. 

Harriet Tubman did something exceptionally courageous: She escaped slavery. Then she did something impossible: She went back. She underwent some thirteen missions to rescue around seventy enslaved people, using and expanding a network of abolitionists that became known as the Underground Railroad. She spent her life as an activist, speaking out for Black people and women’s suffrage. This graphic novel of story is detailed and authentic. Illustrated with care for the historical record, it offers insight into the life and mind of Tubman, displaying her as a woman with an unshakable desire to break the chains of an unjust society. Introduction by Carole Boston Weatherford.

Knox was a Boston bookseller in Colonial America who would go on to join the Continental Army and later become the young country’s first Secretary of War. Silvey presents the “dramatic story of his achievements [which is a…] little-known episode in the history of the American Revolution. 

When 16-year-old Hope and the aunt who has raised her move from Brooklyn to Mulhoney, Wisconsin, to work as waitress and cook in the Welcome Stairways diner, they become involved with the diner owner’s political campaign to oust the town’s corrupt mayor. (from Penguin.com)

Eighteen-year-old Amir Azadi always knew coming out to his Muslim family would be messy—he just didn’t think it would end in an airport interrogation room. But when faced with a failed relationship, bullies, and blackmail, running away to Rome is his only option. Right? Soon, late nights with new friends and dates in the Sistine Chapel start to feel like second nature… until his old life comes knocking on his door. Now, Amir has to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth to a US Customs officer, or risk losing his hard-won freedom. At turns uplifting and devastating, How It All Blew Up is Arvin Ahmadi’s most powerful novel yet, a celebration of how life’s most painful moments can live alongside the riotous, life-changing joys of discovering who you are. 

Humphrey and Me takes us on a journey through the moral pitfalls that imperil the best hopes of even the most decent men and women and points the way to courage and understanding. This is a story about discerning our unique role in the world: our need for heroes who help us see it, and who teach us how to become heroes to others.

Growing up is particularly difficult for Evie Green as she has no past. She lost it when her father testified against fellow police officers in a racially motivated murder. Each family member must learn to deal with their new lives and identities alone.

Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire. Dunbar-Ortiz adroitly challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the Indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them. Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples’ history radically re-frames US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative. 2015 Recipient of the American Book Award.

We know a lot about Kennedy’s political career and untimely death, but little has been written for younger readers about his childhood. Kennedy was both a sickly child and a mischievous one.

Subtle references and evocative language introduce Jesse Owens and what he faced as a Gold Medalist — an African American in Hitler’s 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany. An endnote provides more information.

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship — and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever. 

Wallis’ book is full of political cartoons killed before publication. Each cartoon is accompanied by a brief narrative explaining why it was considered too controversial for publication.

Lyndon B. Johnson was one of the most complex and compelling presidents in US history. Anne Quirk’s biography alternates between chapters that follow LBJ’s childhood in rural Texas learning politics from his parents, his time teaching Mexican American students at a small-town school, and his days in Congress as majority leader and as vice president; and chapters that cover his work alongside civil rights leaders and the passage of the Voting Rights Act. An epilogue discusses the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling that struck down key portions of the act. With engaging storytelling, Quirk paints a rich portrait of Johnson’s presidency, celebrating the accomplishments of his Great Society programs while refusing to shy away from his catastrophic decisions regarding Vietnam and the summer riots of 1967.

With considerable research and extensive interviews, Tim Weiner shows the grave miscalculations that have plagued the Central Intelligence Agency since its inception.

This nonfiction work looks at Title IX, the 1972 legislation mandating that schools receiving federal funds could not discriminate on the basis of gender, ensuring equal treatment and opportunity for girls in sports and education. Included are period photos, a time line, “then and now” commentary, extensive source notes, and suggested resources for further reading.

For African American women, the fight for the right to vote was only one battle. This Coretta Scott King Author Honor book tells the important, overlooked story of black women as a force in the suffrage movement — when fellow suffragists did not accept them as equal partners in the struggle and they had to maintain their dignity—and safety—in a society that tried to keep them in its bottom ranks. 

More than just the story of the Pullman porters, this Coretta Scott King Award winner recounts the saga of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first major black labor union. Organized just after the Civil War, the union brought together many freed slaves who had been hired by George Pullman to pamper the passengers in his sleeping cars. Seasoned with poetry, song, black-and-white historical photographs, and the personal reminiscences of porters and their wives, the text is full and engaging.

Discover the inside story of the Civil Rights Movement through the eyes of one of its most iconic figures, the late Congressman John Lewis. March is the award-winning, #1 bestselling graphic novel trilogy recounting his life in the movement, co-written with Andrew Aydin and drawn by Nate Powell. This commemorative set contains all three volumes of March in one edition.

She was born free in New York City during slavery and turmoil in the United States and went on to graduate from an all-white high school. Maritcha Lyon’s story is drawn from her memoir, augmented by primary source material to bring a girl and the time in which she lived into focus for contemporary readers.

This comprehensive look at the Hoover and how he shaped the FBI necessarily examines the United States and its history including the Cold War, communism, and race relations.

Raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, at the height of Jim Crow, Dovey Johnson Roundtree felt the sting of inequality at an early age and made a point to speak up for justice. She was one of the first Black women to break the racial and gender barriers in the US Army; a fierce attorney in the segregated courtrooms of Washington, DC; and a minister in the AME church, where women had never before been ordained as clergy. In 1955, Roundtree won a landmark bus desegregation case that eventually helped end “separate but equal” and dismantle Jim Crow laws across the South. Developed with the full support of the Dovey Johnson Roundtree Educational Trust and adapted from her memoir, this book brings her important story and voice to life. 

Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic.

Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Wright’s powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.

The life and times of Eleanor Roosevelt are presented chronologically as though one is examining a scrapbook. Much like the approach the author uses for other historical figures, this look at Eleanor is almost intimate, certainly thorough, and compelling.

Regardless of where in the world they live or what cause they take up, the young people introduced here share passion, energy, and vision that may well inspire others to start to initiate change, too. From local activities to much broader venues, readers will follow how these young people have shaped their world and touched lives. The book gives young readers the tools to bring about change. Many young people are seeking out ways to become constructively engaged in their world. This book couldn’t be more timely.