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

Bausum, Ann

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0792241738 ISBN 13: 9780792241737

Publisher: National Geographic Kids, 2005

Synopsis

Freedom Riders compares and contrasts the childhoods of John Lewis and James Zwerg in a way that helps young readers understand the segregated experience of our nation's past. It shows how a common interest in justice created the convergent path that enabled these young men to meet as Freedom Riders on a bus journey south.

No other book on the Freedom Riders has used such a personal perspective. These two young men, empowered by their successes in the Nashville student movement, were among those who volunteered to continue the Freedom Rides after violence in Anniston, Alabama, left the original bus in flames with the riders injured and in retreat. Lewis and Zwerg joined the cause knowing their own fate could be equally harsh, if not worse. The journey they shared as freedom riders through the Deep South changed not only their own lives but our nation's history.

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About this title

About the Author

Ann Bausum writes about US history for young people. Her books consistently earn prominent national recognition. Denied, Detained, Deported was named the 2010 Carter G. Woodson Book Award winner at the secondary school level from the National Council for the Social Studies. Muckrakers earned the Golden Kite Award as best nonfiction book of the year from the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. Freedom Riders gained the Robert F. Sibert Honor designation from the American Library Association, and With Courage and Cloth received the Jane Addams Children's Book Award as the year's best book on social justice issues for older readers.

Reviews

Grade 5-9 The incredible courage and determination of young people, black, white, male and female, who risked great personal danger and even death as they participated in the freedom rides during the Civil Rights Movement are the focus of this remarkable book. History is told through the experiences of two young men of disparate backgrounds, one black John Lewis, the other white Jim Zwerg. A foreword by each man precedes chapters that compare and contrast their families, childhoods, and teenage years, and the events leading up to, and their participation in, the historic rides of the early 1960s. Dramatic black-and-white photographs, accompanied by clear, engaging captions, support the text. Each of the seven chapters is preceded by a full-page photograph. Bausum's narrative style, fresh, engrossing, and at times heart-stopping, brings the story of the turbulent and often violent dismantling of segregated travel alive in vivid detail. The language, presentation of material, and pacing will draw readers in and keep them captivated. Final chapters reveal the paths Lewis's and Zwerg's lives took after the end of the rides, and both men reflect back on that period. A partial roster of riders with brief profiles, an illustrated time line of key moments in the Civil Rights Movement, a resource guide and notes, and a list of further reading conclude the book. A definite first purchase. Mary N. Oluonye, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

*Starred Review* Gr. 6-9. In another excellent work of nonfiction, the author of the acclaimed With Courage and Cloth (2004), covers a civil rights topic less frequently addressed than Brown v. Board of Education or the 1963 March on Washington. Eschewing a general overview of the 1961 Freedom Rides for specific, personal histories of real participants in the dangerous bus integration protests, Bausum focuses on two college students from strikingly different backgrounds: Jim Zwerg, a white Wisconsin native who became involved during an exchange visit to Nashville, and John Lewis, a black seminarian and student leader of the nonviolence movement. Zwerg became an inadvertent figurehead when he was branded "nigger-lover" and singled out for a particularly harsh beating, while Lewis parlayed leadership skills cultivated during the rides into political success as a Georgia congressman. Incisively illustrated with archival photos (one of which shows Zwerg and Lewis side-by-side in a jail cell, "bloodied together as brothers in a common cause"), this moving biographical diptych prompts careful thinking about race (Zwerg himself believed he received disproportionate fame because he was white), and delivers a galvanizing call to action, encapsulated in Lewis' stirring foreword: "You can change the world." Zwerg likewise contributes a foreword; exhaustive, useful end matter concludes, including resource listings, a bibliography, and citations for quotes. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: National Geographic Kids
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0792241738
• ISBN 13: 9780792241737
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 80