To the Mountaintop: My Journey Through the Civil Rights Movement (New York Times)

A personal history of the civil rights movement from activist and acclaimed journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault.

On January 20, 2009, 1.8 million people crowded the grounds of the Capitol to witness the inauguration of Barack Obama. Among the masses was Charlayne Hunter-Gault. She had flown from South Africa for the occasion, to witness what was for many the culmination of the long struggle for civil rights in the United States. In this compelling personal history, she uses the event to look back on her own involvement in the civil rights movement, as one of two black students who forced the University of Georgia to integrate, and to relate the pivotal events that swept the South as the movement gathered momentum through the early 1960s.
With poignant black-and-white photos, original articles from the New York Times, and a unique personal viewpoint, this is a moving tribute to the men and women on whose shoulders Obama stood.

Charlayne Hunter-Gault is a journalist and foreign correspondent for NPR. In 1961, she was one of two black students to desegregate the University of Georgia. She later went on to win two Emmy awards and a Peabody award for her work with PBS's The NewsHour. She currently divides her time between South Africa and Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.