Synopsis
In this history of the modern Civil Rights movement, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Diane McWhorter focuses on the monumental events that occurred between 1954 (the year of Brown versus the Board of Education) and 1968 (the year that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assasinated). Beginning with an overview of the movement since the end of the Civil War, McWhorter also discusses such events as the 1956 MTGS bus boycott, the 1961 Freedom Rides, and the 1963 demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama, among others.
Reviews
Starred Review. Grade 5-9–Motivated by her naive, youthful acceptance of racial injustice as a white, privileged child in Birmingham, AL, McWhorter directs her compelling retrospective at readers who likewise may not realize that history swirls around them. After a prologue that describes the emergence and impact of segregation in the United States, chapters follow chronologically, highlighting pivotal events, people, successes, and failures of "The Movement." Against the backdrop of the constitutional and moral struggle between the White House and Southern politicians, the author recounts the flamboyant resilience of Birmingham's Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, the battered determination of student leader John Lewis, the nonviolent leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the sacrificial commitment of the Freedom Riders. She also explores J. Edgar Hoover's covert manipulation of the FBI, the power struggle between the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the shift from nonviolence to Black Power and urban race riots, and the national political focus on the Vietnam War. Protests, marches, boycotts, and infamous tragedies are sequenced and analyzed as catalysts that fueled the movement. Collections that already own Ellen Levine's Freedom's Children (Putnam, 1993) and James Haskins's Freedom Rides (Hyperion, 1995) will be greatly enhanced by this title. Numerous archival photos add a powerful visual dimension to the text. This engaging, stirring narrative offers a balanced presentation of the heroism and idealism as well as the political turmoil surrounding and within the civil rights movement.–Gerry Larson, Durham School of the Arts, NC
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*Starred Review* Gr. 6-8. McWhorter's critically acclaimed adult book Carry Me Home (2002) focused on the civil rights movement in Birmingham. In this compelling but challenging children's book, McWhorter tackles the national civil rights movement from Brown v. the Board of Education to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. In 1963 McWhorter was a sixth-grader at a segregated Birmingham school, and throughout, this account is both factual and personal. She discusses her feelings as a white child in the South, and she focuses in on the many ways in which both white and black children were involved in the movement: the brave young people who desegregated schools throughout the South, the 1,500 Birmingham students who protested and were attacked by dogs and doused by fire hoses, and white students protesting integration. In the book's most wrenching photograph, two young white children stare at the camera as a black man hangs, lynched, in the background. The breadth and depth of McWhorter's book is exemplary. In addition to learning about King and Rosa Parks, children will read of SNCC, Fred Shuttlesworth, Bayard Rustin, and Autherine Lucy. Some of the more arcane issues such as disagreements between civil rights organizations are beyond the audience, and, unfortunately, there are no source notes. But tempering the complex social and historical information is an open design laden with photographs and a childcentric viewpoint that brings this important history close. John Green
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