Books

Good reads for young kids:

• Dolores Huerta: A Hero to Migrant Workers by Sarah Warren, illustrated by Robert Casilla
• Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music by Margarita Engle, illustrated by Rafael López
• Emmanuel’s Dream: The True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah by Laurie Ann Thompson, illustrated by Sean Qualls
• Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez by Kathleen Krull, illustrated by Yuyi Morales
• Rad American Women A–Z: Rebels, Trailblazers, and Visionaries Who Shaped Our History…and Our Future! by Kate Schatz, illustrated by Miriam Klein Stahl
• Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story by Ruby Bridges 
• Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down by Andrea Davis Pinkney, illustrated by Brian Pinkney
• Any book in the popular Who Was? early reader series, including books about: Harriet Tubman, Anne Frank, Nelson Mandela, Susan B. Anthony, Sitting Bull, Frederick Douglass, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jane Goodall

Good reads for teens and adults:

• Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
• I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai (young reader edition available)
• Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
• March by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, illustrated by Nate Powell
• My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor
• They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky: The True Story of Three Lost
• Boys from Sudan by Benjamin Ajak, Benson Deng, and Alephonsion Deng
• Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting
• Rights March by Lynda Blackmon Lowery

Films

PG-rated biopics for young viewers:

• Gandhi
• Hidden Figures
• Norma Rae
• Queen of Katwe
• Rabbit-Proof Fence
• Rudy
• Sound of Music (for little ones, we stop at the wedding scene, just before Nazis take over the country and the movie)
• Stand and Deliver
• Temple Grandin

R-rated biopics for mature teens:

• 42
• 127 Hours
• Billy Elliot
• Erin Brockovich
• Long Walk to Freedom (unrated)
• Milk
• Mni Wiconi: The Stand at Standing Rock (unrated)
• My Left Foot
• Pride
• Selma
• Touching the Void