It was a time when Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders rallied black youth and adults to march for their civil rights, a time when the Ku Klux Klan was active in cities and throughout the countryside of the Deep South, employing 19th-century tactics to intimidate blacks to stay “in their place.” It was also the year that the worst act of terrorism in the entire civil rights movement occurred just as Birmingham, Alabama, was coming under close national scrutiny. This book tells the story of one grim Sunday in September 1963 when an intentionally planted cache of dynamite ripped through the walls of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and ended the dreams and the lives of four young black girls. Their deaths spurred the Kennedy administration to send an army of FBI agents to Alabama and led directly to the passage of the Civil Rights Act. When the Justice Department was unable to bring anyone to trial for this heinous crime, a young Alabama attorney general named Bill Baxley began his own investigation to find the perpetrators. In 1977, 14 years after the bombing, Baxley brought one Klansman to trial and, in a courtroom only blocks from the bombed church (now a memorial to the victims), persuaded a jury to return a guilty verdict. More than 20 years later two other perpetrators were tried for the bombing, found guilty, and remanded to prison. Frank Sikora has used the court records, FBI reports, oral interviews, and newspaper accounts to weave a story of spellbinding proportions. A reporter by profession, Sikora tells this story compellingly, explaining why the civil rights movement had to be successful and how Birmingham had to change.

A beautiful commemorative edition of Dr. Martin Luther King's essay "Letter from Birmingham Jail," part of Dr. King's archives published exclusively by HarperCollins. With an afterword by Reginald Dwayne Betts On April 16, 1923, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., responded to an open letter written and published by eight white clergyman admonishing the civil rights demonstrations happening in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. King drafted his seminal response on scraps of paper smuggled into jail. King criticizes his detractors for caring more about order than justice, defends nonviolent protests, and argues for the moral responsibility to obey just laws while disobeying unjust ones. "Letter from Birmingham Jail" proclaims a message - confronting any injustice is an acceptable and righteous reason for civil disobedience. This beautifully designed edition presents Dr. King's speech in its entirety, paying tribute to this extraordinary leader and his immeasurable contribution, and inspiring a new generation of activists dedicated to carrying on the fight for justice and equality.

This is an exploration of the interaction between African American religions and Jewish traditions, beliefs, and spaces. The collection's argument is that religion is the missing piece of the cultural jigsaw, and black-Jewish relations need the religious roots of their problem illuminated.

An unprecedented and timely collection of Dr. King’s speeches on labor rights and economic justice Covering all the civil rights movement highlights--Montgomery, Albany, Birmingham, Selma, Chicago, and Memphis--award-winning historian Michael K. Honey introduces and traces Dr. King's dream of economic equality. Gathered in one volume for the first time, the majority of these speeches will be new to most readers. The collection begins with King's lectures to unions in the 1960s and includes his addresses made during his Poor People's Campaign, culminating with his momentous "Mountaintop" speech, delivered in support of striking black sanitation workers in Memphis. Unprecedented and timely, "All Labor Has Dignity" will more fully restore our understanding of King's lasting vision of economic justice, bringing his demand for equality right into the present.

What made the speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.s so inspiring to all people and enabled blacks and whites to move in harmony to action and commitment? Keith Miller shows how the skillful borrowing and blending of both black and white written traditions was the key to King's effectiveness.

From the assassination of Abraham Lincoln to 9/11 and beyond, this riveting case study examines the history of American terror attacks. To many Americans, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, seemed to usher in a new era in which we faced a new kind of threat. But in truth, terrorist attacks had always been a part of American life. This book chronicles thirty-seven such assaults on American soil from the end of the Civil War into the twenty-first century. Author Joseph T. McCann covers the most infamous attacks as well as obscure yet important events. Using a narrative case-study format, Terrorism on American Soil provides detailed accounts of the perpetrators, their motives, and the social and political context in which the events took place. Taken together, these accounts reveal important lessons about the changing nature of terrorism in America; our evolving methods for coping with it; and the psychological, political, and legal principles that help us understand it.