Living History: The Civil Rights Movement by Eric Braun

It's August 28, 1963. The National Mall in Washington, D.C. is filling with people. They've come from across the country, in buses, planes, and cars. They plan to march for civil rights for Black Americans.

The crowd begins to march toward the Lincoln Memorial... for voting rights and ending segregation.

The movement for civil rights goes far back into the 1800s, working for the abolition of human slavery in the United States, culminating in three amendments to the Constitution: the Thirteenth Amendments ended slavery; the Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship to former slaves; and the Fifteenth Amendment gave Black men the right to vote.

But the end of the Reconstruction era brought local laws which gradually made it almost impossible for African Americans to exercise those rights. In mid-20th Century, a new movement, led by Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks initiated activists all over the country to achieve the rights of all citizens to use public accommodations, transportation, and schools and colleges.

But again in the early 21st Century, a new civil rights movement began to form. The long struggle for equality has continued to this day, and Eric Braun's The Civil Rights Movement (Movements That Matter (Alternator Books®)) (Lerner, 2019) summarizes and continues the history of those actions which attempt to, in the words of the Preamble to the Constitution, "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."

In six brief chapters author Braun summarizes the March on Washington, the many events in the continuation of the movement through the federal courts from sit-ins, the Selma March, the Black Power Movement, and adds a chapter, "The Future: The Road to Black Lives Matter," with its own heroes and leaders to bring young readers right up to date in this century. For middle readers, this
slim volume, filled with names, dates, and many color photos, in student-friendly design, covers the important moments and events on the way to equal rights for all, with backmatter--a timeline, glossary, bibliograpy, and index, for young history researchers.

School Library Journal recommends this title for "sensitively and honestly laying out the history, background, and recent events in its respective movement."