Recommended Resources from Primary Sources

The Power of One

Ordinary people who did extraordinary things proving that one person, or a few, can make a difference…

Kanefield, Teri. The Girl from the Tar Paper School: Barbara Rose Johns and the Advent of the Civil Rights Movement. Abrams, 2004. Student-led protest in Farmville, VA. The case that came out of the protest was one of the 5 cases that became Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas and led to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1954 that segregated schools were unconstitutional.

Out of Obscurity. River Road Productions, 2000. Documentary about the 1939 Alexandria Library sit-in. Includes a re-enactment of the sit-in, interviews with the protesters and Samuel Wilbert Tucker, who organized the sit-in and defended the protesters.