The Los Angeles protests against ramped-up Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids that started last month sparked sister protests and questions about freedom of speech at a level not seen since the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020.
The LA protests, subsequent police crackdowns, and the Trump administration’s deployment of the California National Guard, U.S. Marines and Border Patrol, over the objections of local and state leaders, have drawn heavy media attention. So have anti-ICE protests and the law enforcement response here in Atlanta and nationally.
Atlanta, in particular, has a long history of activism, from the Civil Rights Movement to more recent movements such as Black Lives Matter and Stop Cop City. The protests happening around the country today aren’t the first time people have turned out to push back against a government they view as repressive.
These books will fill you in on the history of resistance movements, both in the United States and Atlanta. They can help you understand how we arrived at our current state, including the ways people have resisted government repression and injustice, the gains they have achieved, and how the government, media, and public have responded.
Civil Sights: Sweet Auburn, a Journey Through Atlanta’s National Treasure, by Gene Kansas
For a primer on the Civil Rights Movement in Atlanta, look no further than local historic preservationist Gene Kansas’ newly released guide to Black landmarks in the Sweet Auburn neighborhood. Kansas takes the reader on a tour of Sweet Auburn, showing us the homes, businesses, and churches of Black Atlantans who fought for their rights, going back to Reconstruction. Civil Sights shows the reader that not all forms of protest include marching, and it connects a long history of Black resistance to state oppression with places familiar to any Atlantan.
Where to buy: Amazon and Bookshop
A Night at the Sweet Gum Head: Drag, Drugs, Disco, and Atlanta’s Gay Revolution, by Martin Padgett
Atlanta’s LGBTQ community has also spent decades fighting for civil rights in a city that actively suppressed them. Padgett focuses on the Sweet Gum Head, a renowned drag club on Cheshire Bridge Road in the 1970s, when Atlanta was the South’s gay haven for people escaping homophobic small towns. He interviews people involved in the gay liberation movement to tell the stories of two activists – John Greenwell and his drag queen persona Rachel Wells, and Bill Smith, who advocated to change anti-gay laws. As their stories unfold, Padgett shows how queer Atlantans fought for their rights, despite personal danger.
Where to buy: Amazon and Bookshop
March: Book One by John Lewis
March: Book One is the first volume of a graphic novel trilogy by Civil Rights hero John Lewis, who went on to represent Atlanta’s Fifth Congressional District from 1986 until his death in 2020. The trilogy recounts Lewis’ activism in the Jim Crow South and beyond. This volume starts with his childhood in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Nashville Student Movement’s battle to end segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins – showing readers how the Civil Rights Movement was born.
Where to buy: Amazon and Bookshop
The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America by Aaron Robertson
This book, part history, part memoir, tells the story of the Shrine of the Black Madonna, a Black Christian Nationalist movement born in Detroit that spread across the country, reaching Atlanta. It shows how the Shrine of the Black Madonna’s members from the 1960s on sought to carve out a separate, Afrocentric space that emphasizes self-love and empowerment to create a Black utopia – a powerful form of resistance in a nation that enforced racism through law. Roberts explores an array of Black utopian visions, tracing the enduring quest of idealistic liberatory movements to create a world beyond systemic racism.
Where to buy: Amazon and Bookshop
When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, by Patrisse Cullors and asha bandele
In 2013, when Trayvon Martin’s killer went free, Patrisse Cullors’ outrage led her to co-found Black Lives Matter with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi. The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter spurred activism across the country, becoming a powerful grassroots movement. Here, Cullors lays out how and why the movement emerged, and what its supporters still hope to achieve.
Where to buy: Amazon and Bookshop
No Cop City, No Cop World: Lessons from the Movement edited by Kamau Franklin, Micah Herskind, and Mariah Parker
This is the first collection of essays by organizers and activists in the Stop Cop City movement. It arose in 2021 as a local effort to stop the construction of the $115 million Atlanta Public Safety Training Center in DeKalb County on forestland owned by the city of Atlanta. Activists concerned about policing, racial justice, and the destruction of 170 acres of the Weelaunee Forest occupied the area set to become the training center. That led to crackdowns by law enforcement and the killing of environmental activist Manuel “Tortugita” Páez Terán during a police clearance operation.
While the Stop Cop City activists failed to block the police training center’s construction, this essay collection highlights the varied strategies and tactics that transformed a local collective action into an international movement.
Where to buy: Amazon and Bookshop
This story has been corrected to reflect that John Lewis died in 2020, not 2000.
Hi I think you have John Lewis’s death year wrong. Wasn’t it 2020?