"Interconnected stories present a picture of racial inequality in America, showing systemic discrimination in all areas of society and showing the unbroken line of Black resistance to this inequality."-- The true story of racial inequality-- and resistance to it-- is the prologue to our present. Dyson and Favreau deliver a gripping chronicle of the struggles that shaped modern America through the stories of some of the many African American people who dared to fight for a more equal future. Inequality persists-- but there are many paths to resist. -- adapted from jacket Provided by publisher

Prologue: A note to readers. --1. Mary Church Terrell fights back against segregation -- 2. Ida B. Wells exposes America's lynching epidemic -- 3. Buck Franklin bears witness to the destruction of Black Wall Street -- 4. Ned Cobb confronts racial inequality at work -- 5. Dr. Ossian Sweet breaks through the color line to find a home in Detroit -- 6. Pauli Murray discovers the key to ending segregation in schools -- 7. Daisy Myers integrates the white suburbs -- 8. Malcolm X launches a struggle against police brutality -- 9. Fannie Lou Hamer takes back the right to vote -- 10. James Meredith integrates the University of Mississippi -- 11. Martin Luther King Jr. and Memphis's sanitation workers protest for equal pay -- 12. John Carlos and Tommie Smith raise a fist for Black Pride -- 13. Ruth Batson uncovers segregation in Boston -- 14. Michelle Alexander confronts the New Jim Crow -- 15. Catherine Flowers, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, and Barack Obama expose America's crisis of environmental racism -- 16. Yusuf Salaam battles racial profiling -- 17. Stacey Abrams leads the fight against voter suppression -- 18. Dr. Susan Moore calls out America's unequal health care -- 19. The Black Lives Matter Movement opens the latest battle for racial equality -- 20. Nikole Hannah-Jones taps into the power of history. -- Afterword: The story of inequality in America. Acknowledgments -- Source notes -- Index.