Book Review: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness / Michelle Alexander

Alexander shares how our black and brown men are being rounded up and placed in prisons for drug offenses that are not violent, often for long prison sentences. These criminal experiences and the resulting disruption in life, along with all that comes with having a criminal record - creates an underclass that not only hurts people of color but society in general.

The author believes that we need to listen to what Martin Luther King, Jr proposed - the end of a civil rights movement and the beginning of a human rights movement. 

Book Review: This Promise of Change by Jo Ann Allen Boyce and Debbie Levy

Jo Ann Allen lived in a small community in Tennessee. There were both African American and caucasian people who lived there, but they followed very different rules. The library was for whites only as was the lunch counter. Many jobs were only available to white people. AND the schools were segregated. Jo Ann spent the first 9 years in schools for Negros (the word used at the time) before schools in Tennessee were ordered to integrate. Jo Ann and 11 other students were the first African American students to enroll in Clinton High School. Jo Ann tells her story in this memoir in verse.