historical literature

I have recently developed a fascination with literature set in the deep South during the time of Jim Crow laws, Dr. Martin Luther King, and the Civil Rights. It started with Ernest Gaines' "A Lesson Before Dying" (which I read for entertainment and immediately added it to my list of required reading for AP English) and then another Gaines' novel, "A Gathering of Old Men." Both of these books focus on the lives of African American men during that time period, revealing the injustice they suffered with the law and the loyalty they had to each other.
Then, I read (and watched) "Secret Life of Bees." This book focuses mostly on strong African-American women who own a honey-making business. However, there is a constant reminder of "where they stand" in society throughout the novel - for example, one woman bets beaten to a pulp for wanting to register to vote; a young boy gets kidnapped and beaten for days because he went to the movies with a white girl.
My recent book purchase is "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett (awesome book so far!). This one focuses on African-American women who work as maids for middle-upper class white women. There are three narrators, two of whom are maids and one of whom is a white woman who wants to change the treatment of African-Americans. Her friends, though, are starting an intiative to require all homes to have a separated bathroom for the "colored" maids. They discuss openly that they don't want to "mix" with those people (all while getting their tea glasses refilled by one of "those people"). Meanwhile, the maids go home to hear of constant violence and fear, due to KKK members fighting the integration and a mayor who blatantly states that separation of races is important and will never change in his town.
The more I read, the more fired up I get. I cannot believe that these events and these attitudes were popular in such recent history. It is appalling to me that human beings were treated that way. I'm glad we've come so far, but when I get lost in the book, the characters seem real, until I stop reading and I feel so angry about it all. Angry for these African-American women who raised the white children from childbirth... until they grew old enough to fall prey to the racist beliefs and actions. Angry at these white women who do nothing but gossip and go to meetings while demeaning and demoralizing their "maids." Did we really act like that??
I am so lucky that I was not raised to be racist -- I would have missed out on some incredible people in my life. But the sad thing is, racism isn't dead. And really, neither is separation of races. It's not law now, but it still happens everywhere you look. I look forward to the day when people are just people. Not black people or white people. I hope I live to see it, or at least, my children do. And they help make it that way.

On a sidenote: I think that if I could've been taught history strictly through novels, it would have been so interesting to me.