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Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 8.2 - AR Pts: 13
Language
English
Formats
Description
Born a slave in Virginia in 1856, Booker T. Washington rose in prominence to become black America's foremost spokesman. This is the dramatic autobiographical account of Washington's struggle to succeed and prosper in a country that refused to acknowledge his existence. From his fight for an education to his founding of the world-renowned Tuskegee Institute, Up From Slavery is one of the most significant and defining works in American literature. A...
Author
Language
English
Description
Perhaps the best written of all the slave narratives, Twelve Years a Slave is a harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. It recounts how Solomon Northup, born a free man in New York, was lured to Washington, D.C., in 1841 with the promise of fast money, then drugged and beaten and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years of his life in captivity on a Louisiana cotton plantation. After his rescue, Northup published...
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.6 - AR Pts: 15
Language
English
Description
Angelou's fourth autobiographical volume proceeds from her departure from California with her son, Guy, through her early years in Harlem and the civil-rights movement, to London and Cairo and the breakup of her marriage.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
In this book, Angelou details what brought her mother to send her away, and unearths the well of emotions she experienced long afterward as a result. For the first time, she reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit whose petite size belied her larger-than-life presence, a presence absent during much of the author's early life. When her marriage began to crumble, Vivian famously sent three-year-old...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 6.7 - AR Pts: 13
Language
English
Description
The author and poet recalls the anguish of her childhood in Arkansas and her adolescence in northern slums.
"Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou's debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Sent by their mother...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
At the 1936 Olympics, against a backdrop of swastikas and goose-stepping storm troopers, an African-American son of sharecroppers won a staggering four gold medals and single-handedly demonstrated that Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy was a lie. The story of Jesse Owens at the Berlin games is that of an athletic performance that transcends sports. It is also the intimate and complex tale of one remarkable man's courage. Drawing on unprecedented access...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 6.2 - AR Pts: 6
Language
English
Description
The autobiography of Rosa Parks, the Afro-American woman who refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her arrest led to a year long boycot of the bus system which ended with a federal injunction against segregation on buses.
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 5.3 - AR Pts: 5
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"Jacqueline Woodson, one of today's finest writers, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse. Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 6.4 - AR Pts: 6
Language
English
Formats
Description
As the first female African-American principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre, Misty Copeland has been breaking down all kinds of barriers in the world of dance. But when she first started dancing -- at the late age of thirteen -- no one would have guessed the shy, underprivileged girl would one day make history in her field. Her road to excellence was not easy -- a chaotic home life, with several siblings and a single mother, was a stark contrast...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 7.3 - AR Pts: 5
Language
English
Formats
Description
Joe Louis was born in a sharecropper's shack in Alabama and raised in a Detroit tenement. Max Schmeling grew up in poverty in Hamburg, Germany. For both boys, boxing was a way out and a way up. Little did they know someday they would face each other in a pair of battles that would capture the imagination of the world. In America, Joe was a symbol of hope to blacks yearning to participate in the American dream. In Germany, Max was made to symbolize...
Author
Publisher
Philomel Books
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 7.9 - AR Pts: 8
Language
English
Description
Perry Wallace was born at an historic crossroads in U.S. history. He entered kindergarten the year that the Brown v. Board of Education decision led to integrated schools, allowing blacks and whites to learn side by side. A week after Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, Wallace enrolled in high school and his sensational jumping, dunking, and rebounding abilities quickly earned him the attention of college basketball recruiters from...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 6.8 - AR Pts: 5
Language
English
Description
Based on extensive interviews with Claudette Colvin and many others, Phillip Hoose presents the first in-depth account of an important yet largely unknown civil rights figure, skillfully weaving her dramatic story into the fabric of the historic Montgomery bus boycott and court case that would change the course of American history.
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