Now Is Your Time: The African American Struggle for Freedom

Title: Now Is Your Time: The African American Struggle for Freedom
1992 NCTE Orbis Pictus Honor Book
Author: Walter Dean Myers
Published: 1991
Interesting Facts: (1) "Since no one had to hire a black person, whites...could refuse...jobs to young blacks; the law would declare them wards of the state and force them to apprentice for their former masters..." Black Codes "gave former owners of Africans the right to reclaim them as slaves" (pg. 197). (2) "...racism was not about white people liking or not liking black people. It was about controlling the economies of the country by keeping blacks dependent on whites." (3) As a writer for a newspaper called the New York Age, Ida Wells, "...delivered the message that black men and black women were as deserving of justice as whites" (pg. 213). Ida Wells, "did more to curtail the practice of lynching than any other person" (pg. 214). (4) Psychologist Dr. Kenneth B. Clark debunked the notion of separate but equal when he conducted a doll test which provided clear evidence that "African American children did not just feel separated from white children, they felt that the separation was based on their inferiority...Brown vs. Board of Education showed that children who felt inferior also performed poorly" (pg. 256-257). (5) The nature of the fight for democracy changed over time. Nat Turner organized revolts against his enslavers; the 54th fought in the Civil War; Ida B. Wells organized protest by publishing stories in newspapers; Lewis H. Latimer tried earn his way to equality by the works of his inventions; Brown vs. Board of Education ushered in a legal battle for equality (pg. 258).
Curriculum/Pathfinder Suggestion: National US History Standards, Grades 3-4, Standard 8C:
Explain the significance of the printing press, the computer, and electronic developments in communication, and describe their impact on the spread of ideas

Freedom Riders: John Lewis and Jim Zwerg on the Front Lines of the Civil Rights Movement

Title: Freedom Riders: John Lewis and Jim Zwerg on the Front Lines of the Civil Rights Movement
2007 Sibert Honor Book
Author: Ann Bausum
Published: 2006
Interesting Facts: (1) "The Freedom Rides did not begin in 1961. They did not even begin in 1947 with the first organized test of interstate bus segregation. As far back as the 19th century African Americans had challenged segregated seating on public transportation (pg. 35). (2) "Perhaps Southern racists thought that the Freedom Riders--so beaten and scattered--had been defeated at last, but they were wrong again" (pg. 51). Citizens from around the country watched a battered and bruised Jim Zwerg on the evening news issue a statement from his hospital bed, "Segregation must be stopped...We're going on to New Orleans no matter what. We're dedicated to this...We're willing to accept death" (pg 51). (3) "Jim Zwerg's hospital bed statement, broadcast over national television served as a clarion cry for action...Individuals...headed off to join the Freedom Rides. Black and white, young and old, students, professors, members of the clergy, rabbis, Quakers, Northerners and Southerners, males and females alike, boarded trains, buses, and even airplanes bound for the segregated South--from Arkansas to Florida, from Georgia to Louisiana" (pg. 53). (4) Jim Zwerg reflected on his participation in freedom rides and the media attention that he received, " 'I'm nothing special. I'm a dentist's kid from Wisconsin who happened to get on a bus with some friends who got the hell beat out of him. Think of the hundreds of kids...especially black students, that put it on the line and nobody knows their names.' By being white-skinned, notes Zwerg, he drew extra attention among news reporters" (pg. 66-67). (5) "In 1963, just two years after the Freedom Rides, hundreds of thousands of Americans--black and white, young and old...gathered as one to champion equality and human rights during the August 28 March on Washington" (pg. 68).
Curriculum/Pathfinder Suggestion:
National US History Standards, Grades 3-4, Standard 4E: Analyze songs, symbols, and slogans that demonstrate freedom of expression and the role of protest in a democracy.

Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Title: Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
2007 Sibert Honor Book, 2oo7 NCTE Orbis Pictus Honor Book
Author: Russell Freedman
Published: 2006
Interesting Facts: (1) "...Women's Political Council...had been founded three years earlier when the local League of Women Voters refused to accept blacks...segregated seating on public buses became the group's most pressing issue..." (pg 10). (2) People said that Rosa Parks did not move from her seat on the bus because she was tired. Rosa Parks has said, " 'But that isn't true...I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day...No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.' She had made up her mind long before that if she was ever asked to give up her seat for a white person, she would refuse" (pg 27). (3) People that cared for Mrs. Parks warned her not to allow her case to be used in the courts to put an end to segregation laws, " '...the white folks will kill you, Rosa...Don't do anything to make trouble, Rosa.' Racially motivated killings were not uncommon in the Jim Crow South. Early that year, two black men had been shot dead in Mississippi while trying to register African Americans voters" (pg. 31). (4) ...two days after the boycott ended, a shotgun blast was fired into King's home...a car pulled up to a bust stop where a 15-year-old black girl was standing...men jumped out, beat her, and drove away...shotgun snipers began to fire at integrated buses,, sending a pregnant black woman to the hospital with bullet wounds..." (pg. 89-90). (5) "Rosa Parks never expected to make history. ' I had no idea when I refused to give up my seat on that Montgomery bus that my small action would help put an end to enforced segregation in the South...' the Montgomery bus boycott marked the beginning of what we now recognize as the modern civil rights movement" (pg 89).
Curriculum/Pathfinder Suggestion:
US National History Standards, Postwar, Grades 5-12, Standard 4c: Identify the major social, economic, and political issues affecting women and explain the conflicts these issues engendered.