20 Books About Black Lives Matter and Civil Rights to Put on Your Essential Reading List

In her book, The New Jim Crow, legal scholar Michelle Alexander challenges the idea that the turn of the decade and the election of President Obama meant that American society was seeing past race—which, even if it was true, oversimplifies the struggles that Black people face. Alexander presents the facts: the US criminal justice system is a form of racial control and perpetuates the American racial caste.