“Beyond the mountain, more mountains”
16 Jan 2012 2 Comments
in Biographies/Autobiographies, Civil Rights, middle grade, MLK day stories, Nonfiction, Women's history, Young adult
Acclaimed CNN journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault gives a vivid and inspiring account of how she 
“stood on the shoulders of giants” in fulfilling her own significant role in the Civil Rights movement.
Among the 1.8 million who traveled to Washington, DC, to witness the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama as the nation’s first black president were the author and her husband. Opening her memoir with a description of the event, Ms. Hunter-Gault says it led her to reflect on her own participation in the arduous trek toward equality.
Mingled with her excitement were bittersweet memories of the many braves ones lost along the way, whether through racist violence or from natural causes, including her friend and classmate Hamilton Holmes, who “walked into history with me through the gates of the University of Georgia.” Obama’s election marked a special place in that long journey fueled by the lyrics of the spiritual: “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ’roun’/ . . . Keep on walkin’ / Keep on talkin’/ Walking up the Freedom Trail.”
Ms. Hunter-Gault employs a lively pace and an accessible, photo-filled format that provides historical context for her role in the Civil Rights movement. The black-and-white copies of New York Times front pages provide fascinating insight into the events she relates, beginning with the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that rejected the legitimacy of “separate but equal” facilities, including public schools. Despite the law, years of inequity and dimmed prospects dragged on, as no state in the Deep South initiated desegregation. Separate schools, trains, buses, parks, pools, restaurants, bathrooms, and even water fountains pocked the region. The author cites the conditions at her elementary school in little Covington, GA, which had raggedy, incomplete old textbooks, and no cafeteria.
In Atlanta, where her family moved when she was about 10, she benefited from dedicated teachers and a nurturing environment. “We lived happily apart and generally removed from the worst manifestations of segregation, hardly ever encountering overt hostility from whites.”
Such a fragile balance foundered, though, after four black students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College held a sit-in at Woolworth’s five-and-dime, in Greensboro, NC, in 1960. Soon sit-ins spread across the south, including Atlanta, as African-Americans glimpsed the possibilities of a more just society. Thousands of local college students took to the streets of downtown Atlanta in 1960. Charlayne began her reporting career by covering such events for the bold new Atlanta Inquirer. (Another staff writer, Julian Bond, became its managing editor before vaulting into a many-storied political career.)
A significant prospect prevented Ms. Hunter-Gault from participating in those protests. Although she had been admitted to Wayne State in Michigan, several Atlanta civil rights leaders encouraged her and another outstanding high-school classmates to apply to the all-white University of Georgia, the oldest public university in the nation. At a time when it was uncommon for white students to attend college so far from home, black students’ choices were limited. Georgia, like some other Southern states, provided money for black students to study out of state.
Charlayne and Hamilton Holmes, then enrolled at Morehouse, agreed to accept the challenge. Knowing an arrest would likely result from participating in a sit-in, she refused to give the University of Georgia an excuse to reject her application. For a few more months, Charlayne would wait for her opportunity to challenge racism.
In the fall, the author returned to Wayne State but was summoned to Atlanta for the December trial that would determine whether she and Hamilton would be allowed to enroll at UGA. The NYT headline proclaimed their success: “2 NEGRO STUDENTS ENTER GEORGIA U.: Integration Effected as U.S. Court Blocks Governor’s Effort to Shut School.”
The author began the year of 1961 by walking through the iconic black-iron arch that marks the entrance to the oldest part of the campus. Those steps would lead not only to her own success, but also to her own groundbreaking role in the Civil Rights movement. Although she endured cold stares, taunts, and a window-shattering brick, she found strength in recalling the Twenty-third Psalm, which her grandmother had taught her. And while the author alludes to being isolated in her own room (in the gracious four-story Myers Hall, where I lived in the late 1970s), she balances that experience with recollections of the horrifying violence encountered by Civil Rights activists throughout the South, especially as they worked for voting rights in the dangerous state of Mississippi.
Ms. Hunter-Gault triumphed with her journalism degree from UGA and then headed to New York, but many of her contemporaries, such as the Freedom Riders, intent on protecting voting rights, braved beatings and worse. John Lewis, the group’s first to take a blow, in Rockhill, SC, recalled being “prepared to die.” Many, in fact, did—black and white, young and old.
To the Mountaintop speaks to the power of the press in both accelerating and deepening public awareness of inequality, as journalists such as Ms. Hunter-Gault explore once-overlooked events and perspectives. “I could still make a contribution by reporting on people who had been excluded from the white-controlled media. I resolved to seek out stories that showed black people in all their humanity–their problems, as well as their achievements, struggles as well as victories.” From Harlem to Gaza, from Somalia to South Africa, she has cultivated those stories and shared them with the world.
Even as Ms. Hunter-Gault looks back on her own career and on the highlights of the movement, she points to issues that deserve action, including the still-unsolved Civil Rights-era murders. Citing the Haitian proverb “Beyond the mountain, more mountains,” she stresses that the struggle for justice is never over. A timeline and the full text of 10 NYT articles provide additional context for this engrossing and uplifting account.
Reprinted with permission from the New York Journal of Books.
Related link
- Civil Rights Digital Library Educators, don’t miss this fascinating source for primary resources. As the site points out, “The initiative promotes an enhanced understanding of the [Civil Rights] Movement through its three principal components: 1) a digital video archive of historical news film allowing learners to be nearly eyewitnesses to key events of the Civil Rights Movement, 2) a civil rights portal providing a seamless virtual library on the Movement by connecting related digital collections on a national scale, and 3) a learning objects component delivering secondary Web-based resources – such as contextual stories, encyclopedia articles, lesson plans, and activities–to facilitate the use of the video content in the learning process.”
Women Rock the World
15 Mar 2011 2 Comments
in Biographies/Autobiographies, Women's history Tags: 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, Betty Mae Jumper, Donna Jo Napoli, Edel Rodriguez, Green Belt Movement, Jan Godown Annino, Jonah Winter, Kadir Nelson, Lisa Desimini, Sonia Sotomayor, Wangari Maathai, Women's History Month
To get an idea of the fantastic resources exploring women’s crucial contributions to society, take a look at KidLit Celebrates Women’s History Month, a month-long blogging collaboration hosted by The Fourth Musketeer , a library science student, and Shelf-Employed, a children’s librarian. The site features thirty bloggers and authors from across the kidlitosphere. I am happy to be a part of this project; on March 22, look for my post on the unique children’s book author/illustrator Wanda Gág.
Last week, I featured Frances Hodgson Burnett, the author of my favorite novel for children. Today I’ll highlight five inspiring picture-book biographies that won a place on the 2011 Amelia Bloomer list.
Annino, Jan Godown. She Sang Promise: The Story of Betty Mae Jumper, Seminole Tribal Leader. Illus. by Lisa Desimini. National Geographic, 2010.
Ages 8-12. In an era when many of her people lived “under cabbage palm roofs, without clean water or electricity” and did not understand English, Betty Mae Jumper became the first woman to be elected as a tribal leader of the Florida Seminole Tribe. She surmounted a barrel of obstacles to become educated and to train as a nurse. After she received her nursing degree, she chose to return to her people, even though the pay was so low she had to supplement it by selling crafts and, occasionally, by wrestling alligators. She helped start the Seminole Indian News and served as an interpreter in courtrooms and emergency rooms. Annino’s respectful, nature-filled free verse is enhanced by the lush, saturated colors of Desimini’s illustrations. Included are an afterword by Jumper’s son, a map, chronology, glossary, blibliography, and author’s notes. This fine biography will enhance units on Native Americans or women leaders.
Johnson, Jen Cullerton. Seeds of Change: Planting a Path to Peace. Illus. by Sonia Lynn Sadler. 2010. Lee & Low. Ages 6-10.
What a marvel this little biography is: visually striking and quivering with sensual details and a sense of hope and respect for all living things.We see young Wangari and her mother eating sweet figs, just as the monkeys and an elephant are doing. The Kikuyu people of Kenya, we learn, believe their ancestors rest in the tree’s shade, so Wangari promises never to cut down the tree. While few girls in her village learn to read, Wangari’s parents respond to their daughter’s desire to learn, and arrange for her to go to the local school. At age 11, however, she can advance no more. To continue, she must move to the big city of Nairobi. From there, she goes the U.S. to major in biology. When Wangari decides to return home, she finds a world out of balance. Because the government has sold much land to big foreign companies, the forest habitat has dwindled, and native cedar and acacia trees have vanished. The people of her village have abandoned their custom of not cutting down the mugumo (spreading fig trees). Erosion has caused soil to stream into the rivers. Crops are drying out, and people are hungry. Wangari’s seed of an idea will bring the community together and restore the ecology of the land. Sadler’s lush oil and scratchboard illustrations show the belts of green saplings planted by the women. After being arrested by corrupt police officers, Wangari gets out and takes her case to the world. The woman called Mama Miti, mother of trees, helped get 30 million trees planted, making for cleaner rivers, abundant fruit, and healthy crops. She won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, the first African to do so. Seeds of Change is a great story to include in units on ecology, peacemakers, Kenya, or outstanding women. A brief biographical note and sources are included.
Napoli, Donna Jo. Mama Miti: Wangari Maathai and the Trees of Kenya. Illus. by Kadir Nelson. Simon & Schuster, 2010. Ages 5-8.
Napoli employs simple, engaging words and images to tell the story of Wangari Maathai. The source of her wisdom, the author notes, sprang from the stories she heard from the village elders. This biography centers on the role of the community; the land was transformed tree by tree, woman by woman by woman. Nelson captures this aspect with his large, layered images of oil and printed fabrics. Each time Wangari gives a woman a sapling, she tells her, “Peace, my people.” The restoration of the environment takes place alongside the renewal of a strong and peaceful nation. “A green belt of peace started with one good woman offering something we can all do: Plant a tree.” Napoli includes an afterward on Maathai’s life, a Kikuyu glossary, an author’s note with sources, and an illustrator’s note.
Pinkney, Andrea Davis and Brian Pinkney. Sojourner Truth’s Step-Stomp Stride. Disney/Jump at the Sun, 2009. Ages 6-10.
This dynamic husband-and-wife team has crafted a lively yet sensitive biography of Sojourner Truth, whose slave name was Isabella. She was a big, bold, beautiful woman who booted out her slave name and chose the more evocative one, Sojourner Truth. Andrea Davis Pinkney uses a lively, conversational tone as she traces Truth’s early enslavement and separation from her family, her escape, her abiding religious faith, and how she came to tell her life story to the abolitionist Olive Gilbert. Truth traveled extensively, speaking for the causes of freedom and women’s rights. The author quotes from Truth’s famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech — modulated by a “Bam!” from her strong fists. Brian Pinkney’s energetic dry-brush lines and earthy watercolors match Truth’s feisty spirit. Author’s note and bibliography are included.
Winter, Jonah. Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in Brooklyn/ La Juez Crecio en el Bronx. [bilingual] Illus. by Edel Rodriguez. Atheneum, 2009. Ages 6-10. 
The glow of a loving family infuses this story of how Sonia Sotomayor excels at school, becomes a stellar lawyer, and then a Supreme Court justice. The reader gets a sense of the obstacles she had to overcome and the culture shock she experienced at Princeton, where she heard crickets for the first time. She couldn’t help but wonder, “Where were the subways? Where was the merengue music? Where were the people who looked like her?” It was in college that she first felt inferior and self-consciously Latina. But she did not let this deter her from her goal. She read voraciously, graduated at the top of her class, and became the court’s first Latin American judge, distinguished not only by her outstanding record but by her life experience as one who knew poverty and prejudice firsthand. The warm, sprightly illustrations, done in pastel, acrylic, spray paint and oils, provide a pleasing match to Sotomayor’s optimistic approach. Additional details and an author’s note are included, and the Spanish translation allows for multiple curricular uses for this engaging biography.
