LibGuides: Selma: The Bridge to the Ballot: FLITE Resources

Article Databases

JSTOR
JSTOR is a multi-disciplinary depository of articles published in academic journals, including history and history-related publications.
Guide to using JSTOR

Oxford African American Studies Center
The OAASC is a "comprehensive collection of scholarship focused on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture, coupled with precise search and browse capabilities."

Films

The Barber of Birmingham: The Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement
In this documentary, available as a streaming video, "85 year-old barber and life-long civil rights activist James Armstrong looks back on the early days of the civil rights movement . . . Armstrong's commitment to civil rights took him to the front lines as one of thousands of average American 'foot soldiers' who risked jail sentences and their lives in the fight for racial equality. Armstrong carried the American flag during the epic 1965 march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery."

Selma (2014)
Starring David Oyelowo as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and directed by Ava DuVernay, this acclaimed film dramatizes King's "historical struggle to secure voting rights for all people . . . that culminated with an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama."
Location: PN 1997.2 .S45 2015 (DVD, First Floor)

Books

The following is a selection of books available through FLITE. Ebooks are linked and print books found at FLITE have a call number listed.

Dividing Lines : Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma by J. Mills Thornton
Call Number: Ebook
Publication Date: 2002
With this bold offering from two decades of research, J. Mills Thornton III presents the story of the civil rights movement from the perspective of community-municipal history at the grassroots level. Thornton demonstrates that the movement had powerful local sources in its three birth cities--Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma. There, the arcane mechanisms of state and city governance and the missteps of municipal politicians and civic leaders--independent of emerging national trends in racial mores--led to the great swell of energy for change that became the civil rights movement.
The House by the Side of the Road : The Selma Civil Rights Movement by Richie Jean Sherrod Jackson
Call Number: Ebook
Publication Date: 2011
On Sunday, March 7, 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. and six hundred followers set out on foot from Selma, Alabama, bound for Montgomery to demand greater voting rights for African Americans. As they crossed the city’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, state and local policemen savagely set on the marchers with tear gas and billy clubs, an event now known as "Bloody Sunday” that would become one of the most iconic in American history. King’s informal headquarters in Selma was the home of Dr. Sullivan and Richie Jean Sherrod Jackson and their young daughter, Jawana. The House by the Side of the Road is Richie Jean’s firsthand account of the private meetings King and his lieutenants, including Ralph David Abernathy and John Lewis, held in the haven of the Jackson home.
In Peace and Freedom : My Journey in Selma by Bernard LaFayette; Kathryn Lee Johnson
Call Number: F 334.S4 L34 2013 (3rd Floor)
Publication Date: 2013
Bernard LaFayette Jr. (b. 1940) was a cofounder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a leader in the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins, a Freedom Rider, an associate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the national coordinator of the Poor People's Campaign. At the young age of twenty-two, he assumed the directorship of the Alabama Voter Registration Project in Selma -- a city that had previously been removed from the organization's list due to the dangers of operating there.
In the Shadow of Selma : The Continuing Struggle for Civil Rights in the Rural South by Cynthia Griggs Fleming
Call Number: F 334.S4 F58 2004 (3rd Floor)
Publication Date: 2004
On March 7, 1965, voting rights demonstrators were brutally beaten as they crossed the Edmund Petis bridge in Selma, Alabama. One of the most-publicized incidents of the civil rights campaign, images from that day have been seared into the nation's consciousness. Yet little has been written about the civil rights events in the surrounding counties, the vast sections of the rural south. Cynthia Griggs Fleming addresses this gap by bringing to light the struggle for equality of the citizens of Wilcox County, Alabama. Although right next door to Selma, their story has been largely ignored. Through the eyes of the residents of the county, Fleming relates a struggle punctuated by cowardice and courage, audacity and timidity, fear and foolishness.
Judgment Days : Lyndon Baines Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Laws that Changed America by Nick Kotz
Call Number: E 847.2 .K67 2005 (3rd Floor)
Publication Date: 2005
Opposites in almost every way, mortally suspicious of each other at first, Lyndon Baines Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr., were thrust together in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Both men sensed a historic opportunity and began a delicate dance of accommodation that moved them, and the entire nation, toward the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Drawing on a wealth of newly available sources -- Johnson's taped telephone conversations, voluminous FBI wiretap logs, previously secret communications between the FBI and the president -- Nick Kotz gives us a dramatic narrative, rich in dialogue, that presents this momentous period with thrilling immediacy.
The Most Fundamental Right : Contrasting Perspectives on the Voting Rights Act by Daniel McCool (Editor); Debo P. Adegbile
Call Number: Ebook
Publication Date: 2012
Passed in 1965 during the height of the Civil Rights movement, the Voting Rights Act (VRA) changed the face of the American electorate, dramatically increasing minority voting, especially in the South. While portions of the Act are permanent, certain provisions were set to expire in 2007. Reauthorization of these provisions passed by a wide margin in the House, and unanimously in the Senate, but the lopsided tally hid a deep and growing conflict. The Most Fundamental Right is an effort to understand the debate over the Act and its role in contemporary American democracy. Is the VRA the cornerstone of civil rights law that prevents unfair voting practices, or is it an anachronism that no longer serves American democracy?
This Bright Light of Ours : Stories from the Voting Rights Fight by Maria Gitin
Call Number: Ebook
Publication Date: 2014
This Bright Light of Ours offers a tightly focused insider's view of the community-based activism that was the heart of the civil rights movement. A celebration of grassroots heroes, this book details through first-person accounts the contributions of ordinary people who formed the nonviolent army that won the fight for voting rights. Combining memoir and oral history, Maria Gitin fills a vital gap in civil rights history by focusing on the neglected Freedom Summer of 1965 when hundreds of college students joined forces with local black leaders to register thousands of new black voters in the rural South.
The Two Reconstructions : The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement by Richard M. Valelly
Call Number: Ebook
Publication Date: 2004
The Reconstruction era marked a huge political leap for African Americans, who rapidly went from the status of slaves to voters and officeholders. Yet this hard-won progress lasted only a few decades. Ultimately a "second reconstruction"—associated with the civil rights movement and the Voting Rights Act—became necessary. How did the first reconstruction fail so utterly, setting the stage for the complete disenfranchisement of Southern black voters, and why did the second succeed? These are among the questions Richard M. Valelly answers in this fascinating history.

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