The 25th-anniversary edition of Juan Williams's celebrated account of the tumultuous early years of the civil rights movement
From the Montgomery bus boycott to the Little Rock Nine to the Selma-Montgomery march, thousands of ordinary people who participated in the American civil rights movement; their stories are told in Eyes on the Prize. From leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., to lesser-known figures such as Barbara Rose John and Jim Zwerg, each man and woman made the decision that somethinghad to be done to stop discrimination. These moving accounts and pictures of the first decade of the civil rights movement are a tribute to the people, black and white, who took part in the fight for justice and the struggle they endured.

Unsympathetic, ambiguous, and openly racist remarks are a hallmark of Donald Trump's public life. They may have reached their nadir after he failed to condemn white supremacy in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, but perhaps no remark of his is more telling than his campaign pitch to African Americans: "What the hell do you have to lose?" Quite a lot, as it turns out. In this vigorous and timely book, civil rights historian and political analyst Juan Williams issues the truth about just what African Americans have to lose, and how Trump is threatening to take it away. In Williams's lifetime, civil rights have improved, vastly and against great resistance -- including from Trump and his family. Using the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a rubric, Williams recounts the less known and forgotten stories of heroes like Bob Moses, A. Philip Randolph, and Everett Dirksen, who fought for voting rights, integration of public schools and spaces, and more. This book is not merely a much-needed and highly visible history lesson. It signals the alarm about the Trump administration's policies and intentions, which pose a threat to civil rights without precedent in modern America. In a polarized era, it's especially telling when moderates like Williams are prepared to stand up and shout. This book is clear-sighted, inspiring, and necessary, from an author with the experience and standing to make it heard.

In 1948 most white people in the North had no idea how unjust and unequal daily life was for the 10 million African Americans living in the South. But that suddenly changed after Ray Sprigle, a famous white journalist from Pittsburgh, went undercover and lived as a black man in the Jim Crow South. Escorted through the South's parallel black society by John Wesley Dobbs, a historic black civil rights pioneer from Atlanta, Sprigle met with sharecroppers, local black leaders, and families of lynching victims. He visited ramshackle black schools and slept at the homes of prosperous black farmers and doctors. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter's series was syndicated coast to coast in white newspapers and carried into the South only by the Pittsburgh Courier, the country's leading black paper. His vivid descriptions and undisguised outrage at "the iniquitous Jim Crow system" shocked the North, enraged the South, and ignited the first national debate in the media about ending America's system of apartheid. Six years before Brown v. Board of Education, seven years before the murder of Emmett Till, and thirteen years before John Howard Griffin's similar experiment became the bestseller Black Like Me, Sprigle's intrepid journalism blasted into the American consciousness the grim reality of black lives in the South. Author Bill Steigerwald elevates Sprigle's groundbreaking expose to its rightful place among the seminal events of the early Civil Rights movement.

In the civil rights movement, 1964 was the year of Freedom Summer. On June 21, Mississippi, one of the last bastions of segregation in America and a bloody battleground in the fight for civil rights, reached the low point in its history. On that steamy night three young activists were abducted and murdered in Neshoba County near the small town of Philadelphia.Their names were James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Two were from the North and labeled locally as "outside agitators." Chaney was a Mississippi black. The murders not only shook the nation and shamed the state of Mississippi but also forced loose the iron grip of white supremacy in the South. William Bradford Huie was sent to this seething community by the New York Herald Tribune to cover the breaking story. Probing for answers and conducting interviews, he wrote this documentary account in the heat of the dangerous and dramatic moment, not in the safe zone of retrospection. This is not a political or sociological study, a collection of articles or a diary, but a journalist's fact-filled story of people that fate brought together in a tragic confrontation. Huie tells the history of each young man and studies the personalities of the killers. He reveals not only the harrowing events in this heinous case but also the prejudice of ordinary citizens who allowed murder to serve as their defense of prejudice. He helps us know the young martyrs closely and introduces us to their killers and to the hatred and suspicion that led inexorably to murder. This edition includes Huie's report on the trial three years later. Nineteen local men were charged. Seven were found guilty of conspiracy but none of murder.

Half a century after brave Americans took to the streets to raise the bar of opportunity for all races, Juan Williams writes that too many black Americans are in crisis--caught in a twisted hip-hop culture, dropping out of school, ending up in jail, having babies when they are not ready to be parents, and falling to the bottom in twenty-first-century global economic competition.
In "Enough," Juan Williams issues a lucid, impassioned clarion call to do the right thing now, before we travel so far off the glorious path set by generations of civil rights heroes that there can be no more reaching back to offer a hand and rescue those being left behind.
Inspired by Bill Cosby's now famous speech at the NAACP gala celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Brown decision integrating schools, Williams makes the case that while there is still racism, it is way past time for black Americans to open their eyes to the "culture of failure" that exists within their community. He raises the banner of proud black traditional values--self-help, strong families, and belief in God--that sustained black people through generations of oppression and flowered in the exhilarating promise of the modern civil rights movement. Williams asks what happened to keeping our eyes on the prize by proving the case for equality with black excellence and achievement.
He takes particular aim at prominent black leaders--from Al Sharpton to Jesse Jackson to Marion Barry. Williams exposes the call for reparations as an act of futility, a detour into self-pity; he condemns the "Stop Snitching" campaign as nothing more than a surrender to criminals; and he decries the glorification of materialism, misogyny, and murder as a corruption of a rich black culture, a tragic turn into pornographic excess that is hurting young black minds, especially among the poor.
Reinforcing his incisive observations with solid research and alarming statistical data, Williams offers a concrete plan for overcoming the obstacles that now stand in the way of African Americans' full participation in the nation's freedom and prosperity. Certain to be widely discussed and vehemently debated, " Enough" is a bold, perceptive, solution-based look at African American life, culture, and politics today.

"From the Hardcover edition."

This New York Times Notable Book of the Year, 1998, is now in trade paper.

From the bestselling author of Eyes on the Prize, here is the definitive biography of the great lawyer and Supreme Court justice.

A comprehensive and definitive guide to America's 107 historically black colleges and universities, this commemorative gift book explores the historical, social, and cultural importance of the nation's HBCUs and celebrates their rich legacy.

Included in this one-of-a-kind collection are:

Detailed profiles of each HBCU

Illuminating portraits of distinguished HBCU graduates such as Leontyne Price, Thurgood Marshall, Spike Lee, and Oprah Winfrey

Little-known anecdotes about pre-Civil War efforts to educate blacks, such as how a white pastor founded what became Lincoln University after his black protege was excluded from Princeton's Theological Seminary

Rare photographs and archival materials featuring the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt addressing students at Howard University

Chronicling the history of education in the African American community, "I'll Find a Way or Make One" is not only an unprecedented salute to historically black colleges and universities, but also an indispensable account of some of the most important events of African Americana and American history.

A companion to the PBS series, "This Far by Faith" isthe story of how religious faith inspired the greatest social movementin American history -- the U.S. Civil Rights movement.

Hailed upon publication as a beautiful, seminal book on the role of the church in the African American community as well as on the social history of America, "This Far by Faith" reveals the deep religious conviction that empowered a people viewed as powerless to blaze a path to freedom and deliverance, to stand and be counted in this one nation under God. Here are the stories of politics, tent revivals, and the importance of black churches as touchstones for every step of the faith journey that became the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Using archival and contemporary photography, historical research, and modern-day interviews, "This Far by Faith" features messages from some of today's foremost religious leaders.