Archer, Jules, They Had a Dream: The Civil Rights Struggle from Frederick Douglass to Marcus Garvey to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, Puffin, 1993.

This book comprises the biographies of four of the most prominent civil rights leaders in American history. It covers their mistakes and weaknesses as well as their strengths.

Branch, Taylor, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963, Touchstone Books, 1988.

Parting the Waters is first in a series written by Taylor Branch about Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement in the United States.

Collier-Thomas, Bettye, and V. P. Franklin, My Soul Is a Witness: A Chronology of the Civil Rights Era, 1954-1965, Henry Holt and Co., Inc., 1999.

This book is a survey of the people, organizations, and events that comprised the American civil rights movement, with a day-to-day chronology.

Esposito, John L., Islam: The Straight Path, Oxford University...