Lyn Miller-Lachman–activist, educator, editor of Multicultural Review, and the author of the highly acclaimed Gringolandia, “…a rare reading experience that both touches the heart and opens the mind” (School Library Journal)–is ringing in the new year by speaking truth to power. Gringolandia has been hailed as a “…poignant, often surprising and essential novel {that} illuminates too-often ignored political aspects of many South Americans’ migration to the United States.” The Horn Book raved that “the nuanced relationship between Daniel and his father is beautifully delineated, and the overarching exploration of injustice and its costs gives the novel memorable heft.” Gringolandia continues to gather praise, and has been nominated for numerous awards, including the 2010 ALA Best Books for Young Adults list. For more about Lyn, her peace and justice work, and Gringolandia, including a teachers guide, visit her online.

Lyn offers this essay, along with a bibliography, of recent books for children that highlight the contributions of young activists to the civil rights movement in the 1950′s and 1960′s.

In a few days, a variety of events for adults and children will commemorate Martin Luther King Day around the country. We will celebrate the accomplishments of this minister and civil rights leader, honor his commitment to nonviolent action, and, for many of us, follow his lead with a Day of Service to our communities. But while we think about this great man, we should also think about the millions of ordinary people—many of them young people—who also risked their lives and livelihoods to make real the vision that they and Dr. King shared.

Phillip Hoose’s Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009), won the National Book Award in the Literature for Young People category this year. Hoose profiles the working-class Montgomery, Alabama, teenager who refused to give up her seat and move to the back of the bus nine months before Rosa Parks’s act of civil disobedience initiated the year-long boycott. Although Colvin was considered and then rejected as a symbol of resistance, her actions helped convinced Parks, the local NAACP secretary, to resist, as the adults in the community felt they could no longer remain on the sidelines while teenagers were risking their lives.

Three years before the publication of Hoose’s award-winning book, Amy Nathan found out that a New Jersey fifth grader, Krystal Hargrave, had interviewed her great-aunt, Sarah Keys Evans, about Aunt Sarah’s efforts to integrate interstate buses in 1952. In Take a Seat—Make a Stand: A Hero in the Family (iUniverse, 2006), Nathan uses Krystal’s school project, as well as the family pictures that accompanied it, to frame the story of Sarah Keys Evans. On leave from the army in New Jersey, Private Keys was en route to her parents’ house in North Carolina when she fell asleep on the bus, only to be awakened by policemen arresting her upon the bus’s crossing the Mason-Dixon Line. Outraged by this accidental encounter with Jim Crow segregation, Keys found a young African-American lawyer, Dovey Rountree, who took the case all the way to the Interstate Commerce Commission, which in 1955 prohibited racial segregation on all interstate buses and trains. While waiting for the verdict, Keys had the support of her friends in the Army. How could someone be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect the country, they asked, but be treated as a second-class citizen because of the color of her skin?

After more than a decade of slow progress in civil rights, many African Americans began to question Dr. King’s strategy of nonviolent activism. This was particularly true of young people in the 1960s, and Kekla Magoon’s 2009 novel The Rock and the River (Simon & Schuster) captures the generational divisions that emerged in the movement’s second decade. The novel goes beyond the simple nonviolence vs. violence dichotomy of public perception to Black Nationalism as a self-help movement with deep historic roots and that, in altered form, continues to the present day.

Without the passion of Claudette Colvin, Sarah Keys Evans, and the fictional teens of The Rock and the River, leaders like Dr. King and Mrs. Parks would not have had the encouragement and support to do what they did to make the United States a more equal and just nation.

Books on Young Activists in the Civil Rights Movement

Hoose, Phillip. Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009. 134 pp. Illus. with photos. ISBN 978-0-374-31322-7, $19.95. Nonfiction. Gr. 5-12.

Winner of the 2009 National Book Award, Hoose’s memoir/biography tells the story—in part in her own words—of 15-year-old Colvin’s refusal to move to the back of the bus and how her resistance contributed to Rosa Parks’s act of civil disobedience that touched off the 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Magoon, Kekla. The Rock and the River. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009. 300 pp. ISBN 978-1-4169-7582-3, $15.99. Fiction. Gr. 5-8.

The son of a prominent civil rights activist, 13-year-old Sam Childs is torn between his father’s commitment to nonviolent action and his older brother’s growing involvement with the Black Panthers in Chicago in 1968; this debut novel portrays the evolution of the civil rights struggle into Black Nationalism.

Nathan, Amy. Take a Seat—Make a Stand: A Hero in the Family. Lincoln, Neb.: iUniverse, 2006. 80 pp. Illus. with photos. ISBN 0-595-41761-2, $11.95 (pb). Nonfiction. Gr. 3-6.

A New Jersey fifth grader discovers that her great-aunt played a major role in the desegregation of interstate buses in the early 1950s, and Nathan’s follow-up research documents the achievements of the youngster’s Aunt Sarah, Women’s Army Corps private Sarah Keys Evans.

Partridge, Elizabeth. Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary. New York: Viking, 2009. 72 pp. Illus. with photos. ISBN 978-0-670-01189-6, $19.99. Gr. 5-8.

Partridge describes the involvement of several children and teenagers in the 1965 civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama, including Bloody Sunday and the five-day march from Selma to Montgomery led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Williams-Garcia, Rita. One Crazy Summer. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. 224 pp. ISBN 978-0-06-076088-5, $15.99. Gr. 4-7.

Three girls, ranging from seven to eleven years old, travel from Brooklyn to Oakland, where their estranged mother is now a Black Panther who enrolls them in a summer camp that teaches them pride, self-reliance—and revolution.

About The Author

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich is the daughter of a Jamaican mother and Nigerian father, and married to a man of Croatian descent. So, that’s what’s up with the name. She’s worked as a freelance writer and contributing editor at various magazines, and has developed educational materials geared to educators and students. Olugbemisola has worked extensively in youth development, at community organizations and New York City schools. She was twice awarded a public service fellowship by the Echoing Green foundation to work on a creative arts and literacy project with adolescent girls. She received her M.A. in Educational Communication and Technology, with a concentration in Adolescent Literacy and English Education, her B.Sc. from Cornell University, and is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. “I spent a number of my younger years in different communities across the globe. I attended public, private,’international’, and religious schools. These experiences have had lasting benefits as I was exposed to many languages, traditions, customs – new and thrilling worlds. And each move brought with it both an opportunity and a struggle surrounding identity, which is a recurring theme in my work.” She lives in New York City where she is also an enthusiastic if not particularly skilled crafter.  Read more about Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich.

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