Eyes on the Movement

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Staff -- School Library Journal, 2/15/2006

While this year marks the loss of two beloved civil rights leaders, Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King, it also offers a bounty of inspiring picture books on the movement.

Diane Z. Shore and Jessica Alexander's This is the Dream (HarperCollins, 2006) is a concise, yet eloquent history of the civil rights movement, complemented by James Ransome's powerful painting-and-collage illustrations. In the opening pages, readers see how the Jim Crow laws touched everyday life from drinking at public fountains to riding buses, from eating at restaurants to attending libraries and schools.

The middle section of the book heralds the brave: courageous children integrating schools; tired citizens choosing to walk rather than ride; and peaceful protesters. Children will be in awe of the steadfast diners—three black and one white—sitting calmly covered in egg, ketchup, and sugar surrounded by shouting onlookers with ugly faces to match their deeds.

The final pages celebrate our progress: "This is the school where the doors open wide, and the children are learning together inside…" Youngsters can research the Jim Crow laws, Ella Baker, Walter White, Thurgood Marshall, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—all acknowledged in the book. They can dramatize a lunch-counter sit-in or write a journal entry from the point of view of Ruby Bridges on her first day of school. Children can recite the poetic text in a choral performance.

On a more personal note, Becky Birtha's Grandmama's Pride (Albert Whitman, 2005) is a fictionalized memoir about two young girls who travel down south to visit their grandmother in the summer of 1956. At first the family tries to protect the innocent children when Jim Crow rears his ugly head: Mama explains that the back seat is best, "…it's big and wide and roomy…Plus, it's right next to the bathroom." Grandma tells the thirsty girls, "I don't want you drinking from a public water fountain. You don't know who's been drinking there."

But once Aunt Marie teaches six-year-old Sarah Marie to read, she can't help but notice the hurtful words around her. Heading home, Sister wants to sit in the white waiting room, but her wise sibling cautions, "You don't want to sit on those public benches…you don't know who's been sitting there." By next summer the signs are gone.

Beginning readers will appreciate the power of words and how learning to read opened Sarah Marie's eyes to the world around her. Children can interview older relatives about their memories of the early years of the civil rights movement. They can share their anecdotes or even invite family members to visit school.

Jim Haskins offers another kind of overview of the civil rights movement through the life of one of its unsung heroes, Westley Wallace Law. Delivering Justice (Candlewick, 2005) offers a series of vignettes from "W.W.'s" life, beginning in his grandma's kitchen in 1932. Children discover that young Westley lived with his grandmother while his mother spent six days a week working for a white family.

Readers will learn how his childhood experiences shaped a young man who registered voters; trained and led students in lunch-counter sit-ins; and organized a store boycott, a picket line, "kneel-ins" at white churches, and "wade-ins" at an all-white beach. When white businesses started closing, this well-respected letter carrier won the attention of both blacks and whites in his community. In 1961, Savannah became the first southern city to end segregation. "Westley Wallace Law delivered more than just the mail to the citizens of Savannah; he delivered justice, too."

Through the life of this quiet hero, children gain an understanding of the inner workings of the civil rights movement. Images like those of churchgoers tossing store credit cards in protest of unfair treatment at the local department store and of Law, pointer in hand, reviewing the six steps of a successful sit-in strategy offer a fresh perspective on civil rights protest.

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