Category: Civil Rights

A Picture Book for the Ages

26/12/2019

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Important history is often made of small moments. On August 23rd, 1963, almost one-year old, Sharon Langley took her first ride on a carousel at the Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father stood beside her to make certain she stayed in the saddle. On the first page of text in A Ride To Remember: A Civil Rights Story, told in the first person by Sharon Langley and award-winning iNK coauthor Amy Nation, a point is made:

"I love carousels.
"The horses come in so many colors--black, white, brown, gray, a honey shade of tan, sunny yellow, fire engine red, or even a soft baby blue. But no matter their colors, the horses all go at the same speed as they circle round and round. They start together. They finish together, too. Nobody is first and nobody is last. Everyone is equal when you ride a carousel"

What follows is a moving story (for 6-9 year olds) of the desegregation of a popular amusement park that had long been for whites only. But Sharon didn't get that ride by accident. It was preceded by a community coming together in protest, on more than one occasion. And four hundred people of all races, even children, were jailed. Coincidentally, (or maybe not) Sharon's ride came on the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was making his "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington.

The illustrations by Floyd Cooper, a Coretta Scott King Award winner, have an appropriate retro feel. They also have a loving softness that belies the potential for violence and hate and projects the arc towards justice. The back matter includes a discussion of Amy Nathan's previous YA book
Round and Round Together: Taking a Merry-Go-Round Ride into the Civil Rights Movement, an engaging read of local history, meticulously researched.

iNK's mission, as a nonprofit, is to show educators that well-written books by top authors make a huge difference in the learning experience of both teachers and students. There are plenty of supportive anecdotes by teachers who have used our books in their classes but what happens when a book is the foundation of an important part of the curriculum of several schools?

Round and Round Together: Taking a Merry-Go-Round Ride into the Civil Rights Movement is now a regular part of the curriculum in 7th grade language arts classes in Baltimore County Public Schools. The teachers have paired the book with other works of black history and culture of that time period including Margot Lee Shetterly's book Hidden Figures and Lorraine Hansberry's play, A Raisin in the Sun. For more information on the use of trade books in the classroom, contact Aimee Hutchison, Resource Teacher, Office of Secondary English/Lauguage Arts, Baltimore County Public Schools: ahutchison@bcps.org

iNK author, Amy Nathan, sums up her book, written for a YA audience:
"The book presents the evolution of the protests at Gwynn Oak over a 9 year period from 1955 to 1963 -- going from low-key picketing just once a summer — to having large numbers of protesters in two major events in July 1963 with mass arrests, showing the evolution in the civil rights movement as a whole, as activists in Baltimore learned from the more successful protests that went on farther South: the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-6), and Lunch Counter Sit-Ins that started in North Carolina (1960), and the Freedom Rides (1961). These more effective tactics. . . . . were: having lots of protesters, keeping the pressure up, getting good TV and newspaper coverage, and, with the Freedom Rides, using mass arrests."

Baltimore is also the home of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture, which had long been involved in educating local school children about local history. Nathan, used the museum as a source when creating the book, which was published in 2011. In 2013-2014 the Maryland State Department of Education's civil rights curriculum asked Nathan to write a lesson on the book that is free to everyone and they field-tested the use of the book. It must have gone well because Baltimore County ordered 2,000 copies and prepared to use it

Publication Date 1/7/2020

The Stain of Our Founding Father's Original Sin

17/1/2019

The enslavement of human beings was the major sticking point in the formation of the United States of America after the Revolutionary War that freed the colonies from the tyranny of King George. The economy of the southern colonies depended on it. Virginian, George Washington, our esteemed general and first president, was a slave owner. In the introduction to Carla Killough McClafferty's powerful and insightful book for young adults (actually, any adult no matter how old) Buried Lives: The Enslaved People of George Washington's Mount Vernon, she tells us "At the age of eleven Washington inherited ten human beings, and he would own people his entire life." So the continental congress agreed to omit the contradiction that enslavement of people was counter to the American ideal of individual freedom; thus tabling the conversation for later generations in our country's painful work towards "a more perfect union."

Maybe you'll say to yourself, "Yes, yes, slavery was bad. I need this book like I need another book about the Holocaust." I say, yes, you need to read this book. I needed to read this book. The word "slave" has the pejorative connotation of anonymity. The term "enslaved person or people" used throughout this book brings in humanity. Make no mistake--enslavement means that human beings were victimized and pressed into a lifetime of servitude. Carla McClafferty's meticulous research brings a few of such people to life.

Fifteen-year-old William Lee was purchased by Washington and became his valet or "body servant." He lived by his master's side, attending his every need at home in Mount Vernon and throughout the 8 years of warfare. Many historians believe he is standing dressed in his fine livery behind Washington in the painting by John Trumbull on the cover of this book. Even after Washington died and his will freed all his "chattel," William Lee stayed on at Mount Vernon with a pension.

George and Martha Washington believed that they treated their enslaved people well. They got them medical attention when they were sick. They gave some of the house workers days off to attend theatrical entertainment. They did not break up families if they could help it. Oney Maria Judge, was a "mulatto," (from the word "mule," a sterile hybrid bred from a horse and a donkey) who belonged to Martha Washington as part of her inheritance from her first husband when she was widowed, called her "dower" estate. The inheritance laws stipulated that Martha was not allowed to sell or free her enslaved people. Oney became Martha Washington's "lady's maid" and traveled with her to the various residences in New York and then Philadelphia after Washington became our first president.

In Pennsylvania, there was a law called the "Gradual Abolition Act" which allowed enslaved men and women to apply for freedom after living in the state for six months. Martha Washington was apprised of this law by a friend of her husband so that they could "game" the system by sending an enslaved servant to visit Mount Vernon or another southern state as the six month time limit approached thus resetting the clock back to zero when they returned. Despite being well-dressed and an intimate part of the Washington family, Oney got wind of a plan for her to go to Martha's granddaughter's estate when Martha Washington died. So one night, as the family sat down to dinner, Oney slipped out the door and disappeared into the busy streets of Philadelphia and onto a ship bound for New Hampshire. Martha Washington was hurt; couldn't understand why she had been abandoned by a girl she had sheltered. Despite attempts to catch her and bring her back, Oney Judge established a life and a family as a free woman. Freedom trumped the security of enslavement.

Ultimately, George Washington came to understand the evils of enslavement. And McClafferty tells of the outcomes of some of the lives she so beautifully chronicles in this book. She spent time interviewing some of their descendants, who are proudly reclaiming their family history.
Enslaved people were buried in unmarked graves at Mount Vernon. A new project by archaeologists is underway to reveal the site of each grave shaft. They systematically sift the top soil above the identified graves leaving them undisturbed so each occupant can continue to rest in piece as flowers are placed in recognition of a buried life.

Tears ran down my cheeks as I read of the care and love brought to this space of eternal rest. (Can you believe I'm crying over the work of archaeologists and their volunteers?) The power behind Carla Killough McClafferty's  Buried Lives: The Enslaved People of George Washington's Mount Vernon comes from her dispassionate, sensitive, and respectful rendering of a story of people whose names we know as merchandise on a bill of sale.

Collecting a History

6/4/2018

The point of view of most history taught to American children is the story of our collective past through the deeds and writings of mostly white men. It is the job of historians to examine written works of eyewitnesses and primary source documents to first figure out what happened and then surmise why it happened. As Africans were torn from their homelands to serve as slaves across an ocean, their history was at the least ignored and might have been lost forever, if not for a man I never heard of: Arturo Schomburg.

Now he is celebrated in a glorious picture book: Schomburg: The Man Who Built A Library by Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrated by Eric Velasquez. Born in Puerto Rico in 1874, a descendant of African slaves, young Arturo hung out with the cigar makers, who always had a reader of literature in the front of the room to engage the minds of the workers while their hands did their repetitive craft.

Weatherford’s craft as a writer is lyrical:

“So when his fifth grade teacher told him that Africa’s sons and daughters had no history, no heroes worth noting, did the twinkle leave Arturo’s eyes? Did he slouch his shoulders, hang his head low, and look to the ground rather than the horizon?

“No. His people must have contributed something over the centuries, history that teachers did not teach.”

Schomburg became an auto-didact and a U. S. immigrant. He then began his search for the lost history of the African diaspora.

“So he haunted rare book stores, poring over fragile pamphlets with torn covers and leather books with paper mites between pages.”

On every page, Eric Velasquez’s illustrations brings the man, and his discoveries of great people with African heritage to life. Weatherford includes just a hint of the depth of Schomburg’s discoveries, because, after all this is a book for children. Black heros, poet Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass and Haitian revolutionary, Touissant Louverture are properly memorialized with art and discussion. But I never knew African blood ran through the veins of Audubon, Dumas, Pushkin, and Beethoven.

As you might have guessed from the title, Schomburg’s collection is now a library in Harlem, NYC. The richness and succinctness of Weatherford’s prose and Valesquez’s vibrant art indicate to readers how much more there is to black history if they only started digging for themselves.
Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library belongs in libraries everywhere, including mine.

The Light in Their Eyes

25/3/2018

By Ted Eytan from Washington, DC, USA - 2018.03.24 March for Our Lives, Washington, DC USA -wikimedia commons

For educators and parents, the most treasured moments are when we see that light in a child’s eyes when s/he grasps a concept. Sometimes the concept is about the world and sometimes it is about oneself. In the case of the March for Our Lives on Washington on March 24, 2018, students showed that they saw the light in both cases.

The tragic lesson about the world came from the shooting at Parkland High School on Valentine's Day. Six minutes of unmitigated violence by a shooter with an automatic rifle mowed down fourteen students and three teachers. The emotions of survivors ran from disbelief, to horror, to fear, to relief, to grief, to guilt, to anger. The magnitude of each emotion was on a scale no one had ever experienced before.

The second more individualized lesson slowly evolved and then gained momentum. Through social media the students reached out in an ever-widening network, connecting with others across the land who had also survived horrific gun violence and life-shattering grief. The network included the survivors and loved ones of victims of past mass-shootings-- Sandy Hook, Pulse Night Club, the Las Vegas concert and more. None of them are afraid to name guns as a crucial part of the problem.

There are lots of statistics about gun ownership but the number that stuck in my head is that for every 100 Americans, men, women and children, there are 88.8 guns. After every shooting, people organized and lobbied congress and their local politicians to do something about the lax gun laws. The pace of the news cycle was their enemy. It did not take long for Gabby Gifford, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Every town for Gun Safety, Women Against Gun Violence and more to discover that their efforts to change gun ownership laws have been stymied.

But the students of Parkland High School were not stopped by what everyone else learned was true-- that lobbying congress doesn't work. They were already a close-knit society and they were old enough to think for themselves. The seeds for a peaceful uprising were present. The baby steps they initiated towards the formation of a potentially effective activist organization produced results that lit up their eyes with possibilities. Nay-sayers were ignored. The students found their voices as they recruited help. By the time the March for Our Lives took place, five weeks later, practice had made the leaders articulate, powerful and irresistible in recruiting others. The streets were jammed with tens of thousands catching the momentum. Millions showed up around the world to join their cause.

I have been worried that we are losing our democracy. The good life, here in America, has lulled us into complacency as special interests have purchased our lawmakers and Russia has infiltrated our social media to shape opinions. But now I have hope. These near-adult children have started a movement focused on a single issue just as the Children's March in 1963 galvanized the Civil Rights Movement. Grown-ups beware. These young people have time, strategies, and determination on their side. There is light in their eyes. If they sustain and grow their numbers, we have a simple choice: we either join them or get out of their way.

A Picture Book for the Ages

The Stain of Our Founding Father's Original Sin

Collecting a History

The Light in Their Eyes

Vicki Cobb

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A Picture Book for the Ages

The Stain of Our Founding Father's Original Sin

Collecting a History

The Light in Their Eyes

Vicki Cobb

​​​​Archives

​Categories

Links

Company

Contact

Archives

Categories