Grade 6 Historical Fiction Research: Civil Rights

Recounts how the black community of Montgomery, Alabama, organized and participated in the 1955 bus boycott, which ended segregation on public buses.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel. Their names stand for the quest for justice and equality.Martin grew up in a loving family in the American South, at a time when this country was plagued by racial discrimination. He aimed to put a stop to it. He became a minister like his daddy, and he preached and marched for his cause. Abraham grew up in a loving family many years earlier, in a Europe that did not welcome Jews. He found a new home in America, where he became a respected rabbi like his father, carrying a message of peace and acceptance.Here is the story of two icons for social justice, how they formed a remarkable friendship and turned their personal experiences of discrimination into a message of love and equality for all.

Young readers discover how students and religious leaders worked together to demand the protection of civil rights for black Americans. Activities include reenacting a lunch counter sit-in; organizing a workshop on nonviolence; holding a freedom film festival followed by a discussion; and organizing a choral group to sing the songs that motivated the foot soldiers in this war for rights. Age: 9 - 11

Gorgeously illustrated and told, this is the true story of what occurred in a small Mississippi town in the 1960s when a family of sharecroppers wanted their eight children to have an equal opportunity for a good education and sent them to the all-white schools.

When four courageous black teens sat down at a lunch counter in the segregated South of 1960, the reverberations were felt both far beyond and close to home. This insightful story offers a child's-eye view of this seminal event in the American Civil Rights Movement. Connie is used to the signs and customs that have let her drink only from certain water fountains and which bar her from local pools and some stores, but still . . . she'd love to sit at the lunch counter, just like she's seen other girls do. Showing how an ordinary family becomes involved in the great and personal cause of their times, it's a tale that invites everyone to celebrate our country's everyday heroes, of all ages.

If a bus could talk, it would tell the story of a young African-American girl named Rosa who had to walk miles to her one-room schoolhouse in Alabama while white children rode to their school in a bus. It would tell how the adult Rosa rode to and from work on a segregated city bus and couldn't sit in the same row as a white person. It would tell of the fateful day when Rosa refused to give up her seat to a white man and how that act of courage inspired others around the world to stand up for freedom. In this book a bus does talk, and on her way to school a girl named Marcie learns why Rosa Parks is the mother of the Civil Rights movement. At the end of Marcie's magical ride, she meets Rosa Parks herself at a birthday party with several distinguished guests. Wait until she tells her class about this!

Grandma tells the story about her first trip alone into town during the days when segregation still existed in Mississippi.

Baseball Hall of Famer Leroy "Satchel" Paige (1905-1982) changed the face of the game in a career that spanned five decades. A tall, lanky fireballer, he was arguably the Negro League's hardest thrower, most entertaining storyteller and greatest gate attraction. Told from the point of view of a sharecropper, this compelling narrative follows Paige from game to game as he travels throughout the segregated South.