Literature and Information

Page Number

Verse

Historical Context

Pg 1

Looked up and followed the sky’s mirrored constellation to freedom

Underground Railroad

Pg 3

Birmingham, MLK, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks,

Civil Rights

Pg 4

Freedom Singers, James Baldwin, Ruby Bridges

Civil Rights

Pg 5

Malcolm’s – raised and fisted or Martin’s – open and asking

Or James’s – curled around a pen

I do not know if these hands will be Rosa’s or Ruby’s

Civil Rights

Pg 8

The first son of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings

Slavery

Pg 13

His name in stone now on the Civil War Memorial

Civil War – colored troops

Pg 16

No colored Buckeye in his right mind would ever want to go there

Jim Crow South

Pg 29

Told her there’s never gonna be a Woodson that sits in the back of the bus.

Jim Crow South

Pg 30

It is 1963 in South Carolina. Too dangerous to sit closer to the front and dare the driver to make her move.

Jim Crow South

Pg 33

Nobody telling us where we can and can’t   swim!

Jim Crow South

Pg 37

Are you one of those Freedom Riders? Are you one of those Civil Rights People?

Jim Crow South

Pg 53

This is new. Too fast for them. The South is changing.

Desegregation

Pg 54

Colored folks used to stay where they were told that they belonged. But times are changing.

Desegregation

Pg 72

First they brought us here. Then we worked for free.

Slavery

Pg 72

Then it was 1863, and we were supposed to be free but we weren’t.

Emancipation Proclamation

Pg 72

We can’t go to downtown Greenville without seeing the teenagers walking in stores, sitting where brown people still aren’t allowed to sit and getting carried out, their bodies limp, their faces calm.

Sit-ins

Pg 73

Now don’t go getting arrested.

Sit-ins

Pg 74-75

You know you have to get those trainings, she says, and our mother nods. They won’t let you sit at the counters without them. Have to know what to do when those people come at you.

Sit-ins

Pg 76

How to sit at counters and be cursed at without cursing back, have food and drinks poured over them without standing up and hurting someone.

Sit-ins

Pg 80

But when Miss Bell pulls her blinds closed, the people fill their dinner plates with food, their glasses with sweet tea and gather to talk about marching.

Freedom Marchers

Pg 82

In the stores downtown we’re always followed around just because we’re brown.

Prejudice

Pg 88

The marching didn’t just start yesterday. Police with those dogs, scared everybody near to death. Just once I let my girls march.

Marching

Pg 89

We all have the same dream, my grandmother says. To live equal in a country that’s supposed to be the land of the free.

Civil Rights/Equality

Pg 90

At the fabric store, we are not Colored or Negro. We are not thieves or shameful or something to be hidden away. At the fabric store, we’re just people.

Prejudice/Equality

Pg 91

they painted over the WHITE ONLY signs,

Jim Crow

Pg 107

Each evening we wait for the first light of the last fireflies, catch them in jars then let them go again. As though we understand their need for freedom.

Equality

Pg 110-111

My mother said it was because the students had been marching, and the marching made some white people in Greenville mad.

Prejudice/retaliation

Pg 111

After the fire the students weren’t allowed to go to the all white high school.

Segregation

Pg 237

Even though the laws have changed my grandmother still takes us to the back of the bus when we go downtown in the rain.

Prejudice

Pg 245

I loved my friend.

Langston Hughes -poet

Pg 253

For a long time, I don’t put one foot inside Woolworth’s . They wouldn’t let Black people eat at their lunch counters in Greenville, I tell Maria. No way are they getting my money!

Jim Crow and Sit-in

Pg 297

Before any of that, this place was called Boswijck, settled by Dutch and Franciscus the Negro, a former slave who bought his freedom.

New York history

Pg 302

On the TV screen a woman named Angela Davis is telling us there’s a revolution going on and that it’s time for Black people to defend themselves.

Angela Davis –political activist

Pg 304

My mother tells us the Black Panthers are doing all kinds of stuff to make the world a better place for Black children.

Black Panthers

Pg 308

The revolution is when Shirley Chisholm ran for president and the rest of the world tried to imagine a Black woman in the White House.

1^st African-American Congresswoman

Pg 312

Black brothers, Black sisters, all of them were great no fear no fright but a willingness to fight…

Civil Rights

Pg 317

I believe in Black people and White people coming together.

Equality