Focus on Civil Rights Sit-Ins

The civil rights movement started in the mid-1950s. Fueled heavily by young adults, the movement saw many people protest to demand equal rights for Black people. Through photographs from the time, learn about the many individuals and groups who fought for change, from Freedom Riders to the Greensboro Four to the Tougaloo Nine. Then discover the civil rights movement's connection to modern issues and see how today's youth activists continue leading the way.

Read Woke(TM) Books are created in partnership with Cicely Lewis, the Read Woke librarian. Inspired by a belief that knowledge is power, Read Woke Books seek to amplify the voices of people of the global majority (people who are of African, Arab, Asian, and Latin American descent and identify as not white), provide information about groups that have been disenfranchised, share perspectives of people who have been underrepresented or oppressed, challenge social norms and disrupt the status quo, and encourage readers to take action in their community.

Cicely Lewis is a school librarian with a passion for creating lovers of reading based in Georgia. In 2017, she started the Read Woke challenge in response to the shootings of young unarmed black people, the repeal of DACA, and the lack of diversity in young adult literature. She was named the 2020 National Librarian of the Year by School Library Journal and Scholastic, a 2019 Library Journal Mover and Shaker and the 2019 National Teacher Award for Lifelong Readers by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and Penguin Random House (PRH).