Download or read book Why We Can t Wait written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2011-01-11 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr. King’s best-selling account of the civil rights movement in Birmingham during the spring and summer of 1963 On April 16, 1963, as the violent events of the Birmingham campaign unfolded in the city’s streets, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., composed a letter from his prison cell in response to local religious leaders’ criticism of the campaign. The resulting piece of extraordinary protest writing, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” was widely circulated and published in numerous periodicals. After the conclusion of the campaign and the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, King further developed the ideas introduced in the letter in Why We Can’t Wait, which tells the story of African American activism in the spring and summer of 1963. During this time, Birmingham, Alabama, was perhaps the most racially segregated city in the United States, but the campaign launched by King, Fred Shuttlesworth, and others demonstrated to the world the power of nonviolent direct action. Often applauded as King’s most incisive and eloquent book, Why We Can’t Wait recounts the Birmingham campaign in vivid detail, while underscoring why 1963 was such a crucial year for the civil rights movement. Disappointed by the slow pace of school desegregation and civil rights legislation, King observed that by 1963—during which the country celebrated the one-hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation—Asia and Africa were “moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence but we still creep at a horse-and-buggy pace.” King examines the history of the civil rights struggle, noting tasks that future generations must accomplish to bring about full equality, and asserts that African Americans have already waited over three centuries for civil rights and that it is time to be proactive: “For years now, I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’”

Download or read book You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live written by Paul Kix and published by Celadon Books. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From journalist Paul Kix, the riveting story, never before fully told, of the 1963 Birmingham Campaign—ten weeks that would shape the course of the Civil Rights Movement and the future of America. It’s one of the iconic photographs of American history: A Black teenager, a policeman and his lunging German Shepherd. Birmingham, Alabama, May of 1963. In May of 2020, as reporter Paul Kix stared at a different photo–that of a Minneapolis police officer suffocating George Floyd–he kept returning to the other photo taken half a century earlier, haunted by its echoes. What, Kix wondered, was the full legacy of the Birmingham photo? And of the campaign it stemmed from? In You Have To Be Prepared To Die Before You Can Begin To Live, Paul Kix takes the reader behind the scenes as he tells the story of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s pivotal 10 week campaign in 1963 to end segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. At the same time, he also provides a window into the minds of the four extraordinary men who led the campaign—Martin Luther King, Jr., Wyatt Walker, Fred Shuttlesworth, and James Bevel. With page-turning prose that read like a thriller, Kix’s book is the first to zero in on the ten weeks of Project C, as it was known—its specific history and its echoes sounding throughout our culture now. It’s about Where It All Began, for sure, but it’s also the key to understanding Where We Are Now and Where We Will Be. As the fight for equality continues on many fronts, Project C is crucial to our understanding of our own time and the impact that strategic activism can have.

Download or read book Carry Me Home written by Diane McWhorter and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-06-29 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now with a new afterword, the Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatic account of the civil rights era’s climactic battle in Birmingham as the movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., brought down the institutions of segregation. "The Year of Birmingham," 1963, was a cataclysmic turning point in America’s long civil rights struggle. Child demonstrators faced down police dogs and fire hoses in huge nonviolent marches against segregation. Ku Klux Klansmen retaliated by bombing the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four young black girls. Diane McWhorter, daughter of a prominent Birmingham family, weaves together police and FBI records, archival documents, interviews with black activists and Klansmen, and personal memories into an extraordinary narrative of the personalities and events that brought about America’s second emancipation. In a new afterword—reporting last encounters with hero Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and describing the current drastic anti-immigration laws in Alabama—the author demonstrates that Alabama remains a civil rights crucible.

Download or read book Ready to Live Prepared to Die written by Amy Harwell and published by Shaw Books. This book was released on 2013-02-20 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are you afraid of dying? Are you hesitant to talk with those who you love about your last wishes? Do you avoid the tasks that help you prepare for the future? Or, are you helping someone--a spouse, parent, friend, patient, or client--who is working through the issues of death and the quality of life? When Amy Harwell found out she had rapidly progressing cancer, she began a journey of discovery and faith that led her to a new understanding: Once we are well-prepared to die, we are really freed to live. With a hopefulness that never loses touch with reality, Harwell accompanies her readers through the mundane tasks involving health-care directives, legal documents, and funeral arrangement, and on to the profound opportunities of saying good-bye to those we love. Each step of the journey offers possibilities to grow and discover God anew. And Amy, a seasoned traveler, includes notes from her own passage, useful questions, and a checklist for others on the road.

Download or read book But for Birmingham written by Glenn T. Eskew and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Birmingham served as the stage for some of the most dramatic and important moments in the history of the civil rights struggle. In this vivid narrative account, Glenn Eskew traces the evolution of nonviolent protest in the city, focusing particularly on the sometimes problematic intersection of the local and national movements. Eskew describes the changing face of Birmingham's civil rights campaign, from the politics of accommodation practiced by the city's black bourgeoisie in the 1950s to local pastor Fred L. Shuttlesworth's groundbreaking use of nonviolent direct action to challenge segregation during the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1963, the national movement, in the person of Martin Luther King Jr., turned to Birmingham. The national uproar that followed on Police Commissioner Bull Connor's use of dogs and fire hoses against the demonstrators provided the impetus behind passage of the watershed Civil Rights Act of 1964. Paradoxically, though, the larger victory won in the streets of Birmingham did little for many of the city's black citizens, argues Eskew. The cancellation of protest marches before any clear-cut gains had been made left Shuttlesworth feeling betrayed even as King claimed a personal victory. While African Americans were admitted to the leadership of the city, the way power was exercised--and for whom--remained fundamentally unchanged.

Download or read book The Saboteur written by Paul Kix and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of Agent Zigzag comes this breathtaking biography, as fast-paced and emotionally intuitive as the very best spy thrillers, which illuminates an unsung hero of the French Resistance during World War II—Robert de La Rochefoucald, an aristocrat turned anti-Nazi saboteur—and his daring exploits as a résistant trained by Britain’s Special Operations Executive. A scion of one of the most storied families in France, Robert de La Rochefoucald was raised in magnificent chateaux and educated in Europe's finest schools. When the Nazis invaded and imprisoned his father, La Rochefoucald escaped to England and learned the dark arts of anarchy and combat—cracking safes and planting bombs and killing with his bare hands—from the officers of Special Operations Executive, the collection of British spies, beloved by Winston Churchill, who altered the war in Europe with tactics that earned it notoriety as the “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” With his newfound skills, La Rochefoucauld returned to France and organized Resistance cells, blew up fortified compounds and munitions factories, interfered with Germans’ war-time missions, and executed Nazi officers. Caught by the Germans, La Rochefoucald withstood months of torture without cracking, and escaped his own death, not once but twice. The Saboteur recounts La Rochefoucauld’s enthralling adventures, from jumping from a moving truck on his way to his execution to stealing Nazi limos to dressing up in a nun’s habit—one of his many disguises and impersonations. Whatever the mission, whatever the dire circumstance, La Rochefoucauld acquitted himself nobly, with the straight-back aplomb of a man of aristocratic breeding: James Bond before Ian Fleming conjured him. More than just a fast-paced, true thriller, The Saboteur is also a deep dive into an endlessly fascinating historical moment, telling the untold story of a network of commandos that battled evil, bravely worked to change the course of history, and inspired the creation of America’s own Central Intelligence Agency.

Download or read book A Year to Live written by Stephen Levine and published by Harmony. This book was released on 2009-10-07 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Stephen Levine has worked creatively to help thousands of people approach their own deaths with equanimity, truth, and an open heart. I can think of no one better qualified to help us enrich our lives through embracing the mystery of death.”—Ram Dass “A Year to Live is a poetic and deeply passionate exploration into what creates human suffering. It is also a lyrical and generous-spirited guide to life.”—San Francisco Examiner In A Year to Live, Stephen Levine, author of the perennial bestseller Who Dies?, teaches us how to live each moment, each hour, each day mindfully—as if it were all that was left. On his deathbed, Socrates exhorted his followers to practice dying as the highest form of wisdom. Levine decided to live this way himself for a whole year, and now he shares with us how such immediacy radically changes our view of the world and forces us to examine our priorities. Most of us go to extraordinary lengths to ignore, laugh off, or deny our grief over the fact that we are going to die, but preparing for death is one of the most rational and rewarding acts of a lifetime. It is an exercise that gives us the opportunity to deal with unfinished business and enter into a new and vibrant relationship with life. Levine provides us with a year-long program of intensely practical strategies and powerful guided meditations to help with this work, so that whenever the ultimate moment does arrive for each of us, we will not feel that it has come too soon.

Download or read book The Cross and the Lynching Tree written by James H. Cone and published by Orbis Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark in the conversation about race and religion in America. "They put him to death by hanging him on a tree." Acts 10:39 The cross and the lynching tree are the two most emotionally charged symbols in the history of the African American community. In this powerful new work, theologian James H. Cone explores these symbols and their interconnection in the history and souls of black folk. Both the cross and the lynching tree represent the worst in human beings and at the same time a thirst for life that refuses to let the worst determine our final meaning. While the lynching tree symbolized white power and "black death," the cross symbolizes divine power and "black life" God overcoming the power of sin and death. For African Americans, the image of Jesus, hung on a tree to die, powerfully grounded their faith that God was with them, even in the suffering of the lynching era. In a work that spans social history, theology, and cultural studies, Cone explores the message of the spirituals and the power of the blues; the passion and of Emmet Till and the engaged vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.; he invokes the spirits of Billie Holliday and Langston Hughes, Fannie Lou Hamer and Ida B. Well, and the witness of black artists, writers, preachers, and fighters for justice. And he remembers the victims, especially the 5,000 who perished during the lynching period. Through their witness he contemplates the greatest challenge of any Christian theology to explain how life can be made meaningful in the face of death and injustice.

Download or read book Die with Zero written by Bill Perkins and published by Houghton Mifflin. This book was released on 2020 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A ... new philosophy and ... guide to getting the most out of your money--and out of life--for those who value memorable experiences as much as their earnings"--

Download or read book A Fire You Can t Put Out written by Andrew M Manis and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first biography of Fred Shuttlesworth-winner of both the 2000 Lillian Smith Award and the 2001 James F. Sulzby Jr. Award-details the fascinating life of the controversial preacher who led integration efforts in Birmingham with the courage and fervor of a religious crusader.

Download or read book The Power of Strangers written by Joe Keohane and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “meticulously researched and buoyantly written” (Esquire) look at what happens when we talk to strangers, and why it affects everything from our own health and well-being to the rise and fall of nations in the tradition of Susan Cain’s Quiet and Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens “This lively, searching work makes the case that welcoming ‘others’ isn’t just the bedrock of civilization, it’s the surest path to the best of what life has to offer.”—Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Homeland Elegies In our cities, we stand in silence at the pharmacy and in check-out lines at the grocery store, distracted by our phones, barely acknowledging one another, even as rates of loneliness skyrocket. Online, we retreat into ideological silos reinforced by algorithms designed to serve us only familiar ideas and like-minded users. In our politics, we are increasingly consumed by a fear of people we’ve never met. But what if strangers—so often blamed for our most pressing political, social, and personal problems—are actually the solution? In The Power of Strangers, Joe Keohane sets out on a journey to discover what happens when we bridge the distance between us and people we don’t know. He learns that while we’re wired to sometimes fear, distrust, and even hate strangers, people and societies that have learned to connect with strangers benefit immensely. Digging into a growing body of cutting-edge research on the surprising social and psychological benefits that come from talking to strangers, Keohane finds that even passing interactions can enhance empathy, happiness, and cognitive development, ease loneliness and isolation, and root us in the world, deepening our sense of belonging. And all the while, Keohane gathers practical tips from experts on how to talk to strangers, and tries them out himself in the wild, to awkward, entertaining, and frequently poignant effect. Warm, witty, erudite, and profound, equal parts sweeping history and self-help journey, this deeply researched book will inspire readers to see everything—from major geopolitical shifts to trips to the corner store—in an entirely new light, showing them that talking to strangers isn’t just a way to live; it’s a way to survive.

Download or read book The Last Lecture written by Randy Pausch and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.

Download or read book Veronika Decides to Die written by Paulo Coelho and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-03-17 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A highly original, moving, and ultimately life-affirming book.” – Sunday Mirror (London) Twenty-four-year-old Veronika seems to have everything – youth and beauty, boyfriends and a loving family, a fulfilling job. But something is missing in her life. So, one cold November morning. She takes a handful of sleeping pills expecting to never wake up. But she does—at a mental hospital where she is told that she has only days to live. Inspired by events in Coelho’s own life, Veronika Decides to Die questions the meaning of madness and celebrates individuals who do not fit into patterns society considers to be normal. Bold and illuminating, it is a dazzling portrait of a young woman at the crossroads of despair and liberation, and a poetic, exuberant appreciation of each day as a renewed opportunity.

Download or read book A Little Life written by Hanya Yanagihara and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 833 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.

Download or read book Tuesdays with Morrie written by Mitch Albom and published by Crown. This book was released on 2007-06-29 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A special 25th anniversary edition of the beloved book that has changed millions of lives with the story of an unforgettable friendship, the timeless wisdom of older generations, and healing lessons on loss and grief—featuring a new afterword by the author “A wonderful book, a story of the heart told by a writer with soul.”—Los Angeles Times “The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.” Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was his college professor Morrie Schwartz. Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded, and the world seemed colder. Wouldn’t you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you, receive wisdom for your busy life today the way you once did when you were younger? Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man’s life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final “class”: lessons in how to live. “The truth is, Mitch,” he said, “once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.” Tuesdays with Morrie is a magical chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie’s lasting gift with the world.

Download or read book If He Had Been with Me written by Laura Nowlin and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If he had been with me everything would have been different... I wasn't with Finn on that August night. But I should've been. It was raining, of course. And he and Sylvie were arguing as he drove down the slick road. No one ever says what they were arguing about. Other people think it's not important. They do not know there is another story. The story that lurks between the facts. What they do not know—the cause of the argument—is crucial. So let me tell you...

Download or read book The Lincoln Highway written by Amor Towles and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER More than ONE MILLION copies sold A TODAY Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick A New York Times Notable Book, and Chosen by Oprah Daily, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Bill Gates and Barack Obama as a Best Book of the Year “Wise and wildly entertaining . . . permeated with light, wit, youth.” —The New York Times Book Review “A classic that we will read for years to come.” —Jenna Bush Hager, Read with Jenna book club “Fantastic. Set in 1954, Towles uses the story of two brothers to show that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as we might hope.” —Bill Gates “A real joyride . . . elegantly constructed and compulsively readable.” —NPR The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York. Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes. “Once again, I was wowed by Towles’s writing—especially because The Lincoln Highway is so different from A Gentleman in Moscow in terms of setting, plot, and themes. Towles is not a one-trick pony. Like all the best storytellers, he has range. He takes inspiration from famous hero’s journeys, including The Iliad, The Odyssey, Hamlet, Huckleberry Finn, and Of Mice and Men. He seems to be saying that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as an interstate highway. But, he suggests, when something (or someone) tries to steer us off course, it is possible to take the wheel.” – Bill Gates