Book description
On Christmas night, 1951, a bomb exploded in Mims, Florida, under the home of civil rights activist and educator Harry T. Moore.
Harry and his wife Harriette both died from injuries sustained in the blast, making them the first martyrs of the contemporary civil rights movement. They were killed twelve…
Why read it?
1 author picked Before His Time as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Before moderating a Smithsonian panel, I mentioned this book to Astronauts Mae Jemison and Leland Melvin.
It prompted a conversation (among people who’d sat atop rockets that shot them into outer space) where they agreed that the most frightened they’d ever been was while driving at night near the Cape Canaveral. The book, about Harry T. Moore’s lonely war against domestic terrorism, lays bare the source of their fear. Murdering Black people was how White Supremacy kept its power in the states where the space program was based.
Florida had the highest lynching rate per capita, and Brevard County, where…
From Richard's list on race and racism in America during the time of the space program.
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These Blue Mountains
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
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The authoritative but accessible history of the birth of modern American intelligence in World War II that treats not just one but all of the various disciplines: spies, codebreakers, saboteurs.
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