Observing Martin Luther King Day

Observe Martin Luther King Day by reading about the African American struggle for civil rights and equality in these fine books:

http://www.tamu.edu/upress/BOOKS/2005/botson.htm
Labor, Civil Rights, and the Hughes Tool Company
Michael R. Botson, Jr.

". . . an important contribution to the literature on the relationship between organized labor and the civil rights movement. It will be of great interest not only to those who study labor and civil rights in Texas, but also to scholars who focus on the broader social movements of the twentieth-century America."—Southwestern Historical Quarterly, October 2006

http://www.tamu.edu/upress/BOOKS/2005/robertson.htm
Fair Ways
How Six Black Golfers Won Civil Rights in Beaumont, Texas
Robert J. Robertson
 
". . . a story that cuts to the core of sports and society. It reminds us  how far we have come . . . in the last fifty years."—Jim Nantz, CBS Sports

http://www.tamu.edu/upress/BOOKS/2003/blackwelder.htm
Styling Jim Crow
African American Beauty Training during Segregation
Julia Kirk Blackwelder
   
Julia Kirk Blackwelder focuses on the beauty education industry in racially segregated communities from World War I through the 1960s. In this revealing study of two black beauty companies of the Jim Crow era, Blackwelder looks at the industry as an example of black entrepreneurial effort and an opportunity for young women to obtain training and income that promised social mobility within the African American community.
    Blackwelder demonstrates that commerce, politics, and culture all intersected inside African American beauty schools of the Jim Crow era.