She Shall Overcome: Poet Carole Boston Weatherford

Birmingham, 1963 is a fictionalized eyewitness account of one of the most tragic events in American history, the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, which injured 21 people and killed four girls.

That particular event really was a turning point in terms of the national response to the Civil Rights Movement. People who objected to Dr. King leading the marches, to the mass movement, could no longer object to the goals of the movement when they saw that four girls had been killed by the very thing that Martin Luther King, Jr. and protesters across the country had been trying to stop. They saw the harm that hate can do when it's unchecked and when people of conscience don't stand up against it. When that church was bombed, the president had to do something. The nation couldn't stand by and let those four girls' deaths be in vain.

As you know, it took nearly 40 years to convict the men who committed that hate crime.

That in itself is a crime—that it took so long for the men to be prosecuted. But it's not uncommon.

You're not surprised that things dragged on for so long?

I'm not surprised. There are dozens of crimes from the Civil Rights era that remain unsolved. It's not unusual because the racism was so institutionalized. That's what institutionalized racism is. It's in the law enforcement agency. It's in the courts. It's in schools. It's in businesses. It's everywhere. It becomes a way of operating.

You often write about the struggle for social justice. What message are you hoping to send young readers?

I want them to know that young people made sacrifices, and some made the ultimate sacrifice by giving up their lives. And these were kids not unlike kids today. Of course, there wasn't technology, but they had the same kinds of interests and curiosities and parents who loved them and friends who enjoyed them and who mourned their loss when they were killed. I want the books that I write that are set during the Jim Crow era and the Civil Rights era to nudge today's kids toward justice. We've gone a long way, but we still have a long way to go.

When did you first realize you wanted to write?

I made up my first poem in first grade. I just announced to my mom on the way home from school, as she was driving, that I had made up a poem—and I said it aloud for her. I have no idea where it came from. She parked the car, even though we were just two blocks from home, and asked me if I could repeat it and she wrote it down. As fate would have it, my father was a high school printing teacher, and he printed some of my early poems on index cards. At a time when there were no computers and no such thing as desktop publishing, I was able to see my work in print.

You worked in public relations for many years, and your first children's books weren't published until the mid-'90s. As a writer, what kept you going?

I knew that this was God's plan for me, and I had so much faith in my abilities that I could hold up under the rejection. I was sending out adult poetry collections. By the early '90s, I had sent out children's work and, you know, I've been rejected by some of the best publishing companies in the country. But because I had that encouragement from my parents and from my elementary school teachers and even from my high school teachers, I had this unwavering belief in my writing abilities. So I never, ever quit.