The goal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to end racial discrimination, but when the goal was not met, many became disillusioned with nonviolent resistance and gravitated to the black power movement. Leaders of early black power movements included Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael. Two major black power groups emerged: the Black Panther Party, a strong, powerful group founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, encouraged following socialism; the US Organization supported increased African American pride. By 1975, black power groups weakened, and the movement met its demise. Short, sometimes choppy sentences make this seem, at times, like a strung-together litany of facts. Still, the information is interesting, and fact boxes (some expanding the text and others introducing new topics) and photographs are plentiful throughout. Each chapter ends with a topic or scenario for further exploration on the publisher's Core Library website. A time line of important events is appended. This overview could serve as a starting point for more in-depth research.

These titles provide basic introductions to these concurrent and related movements, though both suffer from choppily written texts ("Martin Luther King Jr. disagreed. He thought peaceful protests were best"). The timeline goes to 1975 in Power and to 1968 in Civil Rights, which limits readers' ability to contextualize current events. Photos and sidebars supplement the information. Reading list. Glos., ind.