F BEATTY, P.

 

The town of Dickens, California is such an embarrassment that it has been removed from the state map. In a plot to bring attention to the town, the narrator initiates a scheme involving re-segregating the local school, a scheme which eventually results in a trial before the Supreme Court. Booklist says this novel is “frequently laugh-out-loud funny and, in the way of the great ones, profoundly thought provoking.”

F CHEVALIER, T.

 

 

F EDGERTON, C.

 

 

F HANSEN, M.

 

MYS JOHNSON, D.

 

 

F SHANGE, N.

 

F SHINER, L.

 

B BEALS, M.

 

305.896 COLBY

 

This book chronicles America's troubling relationship with race through four interrelated stories: the transformation of the Birmingham school system; a Kansas City neighborhood's fight against housing discrimination; the curious racial divide of the Madison Avenue ad world; and a Louisiana Catholic parish's forty-year effort to build an integrated church. “Pointing out the shortfalls of court-ordered busing, affirmative action, and other well-intentioned programs, Colby's charming and surprisingly funny book shows us both how far we've come in bridging the racial divide and how far we've yet to go,” says a review in Publishers Weekly.

379.263 DEVLIN

 

Historian Rachel Devlin explores the history of the school desegregation fight from the late 1940s through the mid-1960s by portraying the lives of African American girls and their families who defied the Jim Crow system wherein children first experienced the reality of segregation. Library Journal calls it “a thoroughly researched, well-written work about civil rights, American history, and the momentum of political change that young people, particularly women, initiate.”

379.263 GEARY

 

The school careers of two teenage girls who lived across town from each other - one African American, one white - were altered by a court-ordered desegregation plan for Durham, North Carolina in 1970. As adults, they reflect on how school desegregation influenced their personal lives.  Jaki Shelton Green, North Carolina poet laureate, says that “Going to School in Black and White offers unique opportunities for deepening our understanding about implicit biases and stereotypes.”

How I Shed My Skin : Unlearning the Racist Lessons of a Southern Childhood
by Jim Grimsley
B GRIMSLEY, J

In August of 1966, the year federally mandated integration of the schools went into effect, Jim Grimsley entered the sixth grade in his small eastern North Carolina hometown. For the first time, he would be in a classroom with African American children. Forty years later, Grimsley, a critically acclaimed novelist, revisits that school and those times, remembering his personal reactions, and his growing awareness of his own mostly unrecognized racist attitudes. "Jim Grimsley isn't one to shy away from the pained and difficult memories of his childhood . . . haunting,” says Kirkus Reviews.

YAF Draper, S. 
 

In 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas, Sylvia Patterson is finishing the eighth grade and is occupied with typical eighth-grade concerns, from relationships with friends to a new romance.  But that changes when she is selected to be one of the first African American students to integrate Little Rock Central High School.  While excited at first, over the summer Sylvia grows to appreciate the challenges and the real dangers of attending the formerly all-white school and wonders if this is the path she should take.  The author presents a teenager who must struggle to make the right choice for herself while balancing the expectations of her family and community.

 

JB BEALS, M.

 

For ages 10 to 14
In this memoir, Beals recounts personal stories from her childhood in Jim-Crow Arkansas in the 1940s and 1950s.  She details the everyday violence and indignities faced by the African American community, ranging from having to use separate bathroom facilities to enduring the terrors of the Ku Klux Klan.  With the encouragement of a loving and supportive family, Beals transforms her fear and frustration into the determination to make a change, leading eventually to her volunteering to participate in the integration program at Central High School. 

 

 

In this memoir in verse, Boyce narrates her experience as one of twelve students who were the first African Americans to integrate the public schools in Clinton, Tennessee in 1956.  Boyce describes the reality of daily life in the segregated South, her family’s personal experiences and the tension and violence that accompanied the integration of the schools.  Despite all that she endures, Boyce maintains a stubborn hope that racial equality is possible and that she can help to make it a reality. 
 

Pinkney presents the fictional diary of Dawnie Rae Johnson, an African American girl living in 1950s Virginia.  Following the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Dawnie Rae is chosen as one of the first African American students to integrate the local public school.  The novel realistically presents the hostility, harassment and violence experienced by students like Dawnie Rae.  At the same time, Dawnie Rae is a fully realized character, describing her hopes, her achievements and her fierce attachment to her family.

DVD FEATURE RUBY

 

In 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges is the first African American child to integrate the New Orleans Public School System.  On the first day of school, she is escorted to the entrance by federal marshals, and sits in an empty classroom because white families have pulled their children out of the class.  She and her family persist despite death threats and other forms of harassment. They are determined that Ruby should get a good education.

DVD FEATURE LOVI

 

DVD FEATURE REME

 

In 1971, a court order forces the desegregation of Virginia high schools.  Two schools, one with primarily white students and one with primarily African American students, are combined, as are their football teams.  The head coaching job goes to Herman Boone, the coach at the African American high school, despite the successful record of the white coach, Bill Yoast.  Yoast agrees to stay on as an assistant coach, and the team navigates all the problems that arise from integration during their first year.  The movie stars Denzel Washington and Will Patton.

DVD FEATURE HURR

 

Ruben “Hurricane” Carter is an up and coming middleweight boxer, with a realistic shot at a title fight.  That is, he was, until he is arrested and convicted of a triple homicide and sentenced to three life sentences.  As the years pass, he writes a biography in which he proclaims his innocence.  It is read by Lesra, a Canadian kid who starts a movement to get Carter exonerated.  The movie stars Denzel Washington as Carter. 

 

Philadelphia homicide detective Virgil Tibbs is waiting for a train in rural Sparta, Mississippi when he is arrested by the local police.  The African American detective is suspected of murdering a businessman from out of town who was thinking of building a factory.  Police chief Gillespie, once he determines that Tibbs is not the murderer, reluctantly asks for his help in solving the case.  Tibbs agrees to do so even at great personal risk to himself.  Stars Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger.