Moments in History: Turn of the Century, Civil Rights, and American History through the Vietnam War

A look at the lives of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and how they were led to seek revolution through peace.

In 1960s New York, fifth-grader Ruthie, a Cuban-Jewish immigrant, must rely on books, art, her family, and friends in her multicultural neighborhood when an accident puts her in a body cast.

The tangled relationships and alliances of many nations, the introduction of modern weaponry, and top-level military decisions that resulted in thousands of casualties all contributed to the "great war," which people hoped and believed would be the only conflict of its kind.

At Lu Olivera's school the white kids and black kids sit on different sides of the classroom while Lu just wants to get along with everyone, but growing racial tensions will not let Lu stay neutral about the racial divide in school.

The memoir of Wade Hudson, a Black man and Civil Rights activist who came of age in the 1960s at the height of the Civil Rights Movement.

Written by a prolific master of narrative nonfiction, this is a compulsively readable true-crime story based on an event dubbed the "crime of the century." In 1924, eighteen-year-old college students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb made a decision: they would commit the perfect crime by kidnapping and murdering a child they both knew. But they made one crucial error: as they were disposing of the body of young Bobby Franks, whom they had bludgeoned to death, Nathan's eyeglasses fell from his jacket pocket. Multi-award-winning author Candace Fleming depicts every twist and turn of this harrowing case--how two wealthy, brilliant young men planned and committed what became known as the crime of the century, how they were caught, why they confessed, and how the renowned criminal defense attorney Clarence Darrow enabled them to avoid the death penalty.

A stirring memoir of growing up Black in a town at the epicenter of the fight for freedom, equality, and human rights.

Stella North is one of twelve young pilots competing in a 1937 air race meant to promote peace in Europe, but when one of her competitors is sabotaged, Stella races to determine who is capable of murder, and who might be the next victim.

Ginny Rose and Peggy were best friends at seven, picking peaches on hot summer days. Peggy's family owned the farm, and Ginny Roses were pickers, escaping the Oklahoma dust storms. That didn't matter to them then, but now, ten years, hard miles, and a world war later, Ginny Roses family is back in town and their differences feel somehow starker. Especially since Peggy's new best friend, Lisette, is a wealthy bankers daughter. Still, there's no denying what all three girls have in common: Families with great fissures that are about to break wide open. And a determination to not just accept things as they are anymore. This summer they will each make a stand. Its a season of secrets revealed. Of daring plans to heal old wounds. Of hearts won and hearts broken. A summer when everything changes because you're seventeen, and its time to be bold. And because its easier to be brave with a true friend by your side.

Slip behind the Iron Curtain into a world of smoke, secrets, and lies in this stunning novel where someone is always listening and nothing is as it seems. Noah Keller has a pretty normal life, until one wild afternoon when his parents pick him up from school and head straight for the airport, telling him on the ride that his name isn't really Noah and he didn't really just turn eleven in March. And he can't even ask them why, not because of his Astonishing Stutter, but because asking questions is against the newly instated rules. (Rule Number Two: Don't talk about serious things indoors, because Rule Number One: They will always be listening). As Noah, now "Jonah Brown," and his parents head behind the Iron Curtain into East Berlin, the rules and secrets begin to pile up so quickly that he can hardly keep track of the questions bubbling up inside him: Who, exactly, is listening and why? When did his mother become fluent in so many languages? And what really happened to the parents of his only friend, Cloud-Claudia, the lonely girl who lives downstairs?

Isaiah never noticed Angel as anything but a dorky, Bible toting church girl until their English teacher offers them a job on her mobile library. Angel can’t turn down the money and Isaiah is soon eager to be in close quarters with Angel every afternoon. Life changes on May 31, 1921 when a vicious white mob storms the Black community of Greenwood, leaving the town destroyed.

As infants, twin sisters Charlie Yates and Magnolia Heathwood were secretly separated after the brutal lynching of their parents, who died for loving across the color line. Now, at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, Charlie is a young Black organizer in Harlem, while white-passing Magnolia is the heiress to a cotton plantation in rural Georgia. Magnolia knows nothing of her racial heritage, but secrets are hard to keep in a town haunted by the ghosts of its slave-holding past. When Magnolia finally learns the truth, her reflection mysteriously disappears from mirrors--the sign of a terrible curse. Meanwhile, in Harlem, Charlie's beloved grandmother falls ill. Her final wish is to be buried back home in Georgia--and, unbeknownst to Charlie, to see her long-lost granddaughter, Magnolia Heathwood, one last time. So Charlie travels into the Deep South, confronting the land of her worst nightmares--and Jim Crow segregation. The sisters reunite as teenagers in the deeply haunted town of Eureka, Georgia, where ghosts linger centuries after their time and dangers lurk behind every mirror. They couldn't be more different, but they will need each other to put the hauntings of the past to rest, to break the mirrors deadly curse--and to discover the meaning of sisterhood in a racially divided land.

The Davenports are one of the few Black families of immense wealth and status in 1910 Chicago, and the two daughters, Olivia and Helen, are finding their way and finding love--even where they are not supposed to.

An interracial friendship between two teenaged girls goes tragically wrong in this powerful historical novel set in the Jim Crow South. For Lamb follows a family striving to better their lives in the late 1930s Jackson, Mississippi. Lamb’s mother is a hard-working, creative seamstress who cannot reveal she is a lesbian. Lamb’s brother has a brilliant mind and has even earned a college scholarship for a black college up north--if only he could curb his impulsiveness and rebellious nature. Lamb herself is a quiet and studious girl. She is also naive. As she tentatively accepts the friendly overtures of a white girl who loans her a book she loves, she sets off a calamitous series of events that pulls in her mother, charming hustler uncle, estranged father, and brother, and ends in a lynching.

For over 200 years, people have marched, gone to jail, risked their lives, and even died trying to get the right to vote in the United States. Others, hungry to acquire or hold onto power, have gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent people from casting ballets or outright stolen votes and sometimes entire elections. Perfect for students who want to know more about voting rights, this nonfiction book contains an extensive view of suffrage from the Founding Fathers to the 19th Amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to today's voter suppression controversies, and explains the barriers people of color, Indigenous people, and immigrants face.

Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society―she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer, Asian, adopted, and treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her.