In this inspiring collection of true stories, thirty African-Americans who were children or teenagers in the 1950s and 1960s talk about what it was like for them to fight segregation in the South-to sit in an all-white restaurant and demand to be served, to refuse to give up a seat at the front of the bus, to be among the first to integrate the public schools, and to face violence, arrest, and even death for the cause of freedom. "Thrilling...Nothing short of wonderful."-The New York Times Awards: ( A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year ( A Booklist Editors' Choice

Freedom's Children: The 1938 Labor Rebellion and the Birth of Modern Jamaica

When Carrie Allen McCray was a child, she was afraid to ask about the framed photograph of a white man on her mother's dresser. Years later she learned that he was her grandfather, a Confederate general, and that her grandmother was a former slave. In her late seventies, Carrie McCray went searching for her history and found the remarkable story of her mother, Mary, the illegitimate daughter of General J. R. Jones, of Lynchburg, Virginia. Jones would later be cast out of Lynchburg society for publicly recognizing his daughter. FREEDOM'S CHILD is a loving remembrance of how Mary spent her life beating down the kind of thinking that ostracized her father. She was a leader in the founding of the NAACP and hosted the likes of Langston Hughes and W.E.B. Du Bois as they plotted the war against discrimination at her kitchen table. Carrie McCray's memories reward us with an extraordinarily vivid and intimate portrait of a remarkable woman. "Highly recommended for all readers."--Library Journal, hot pick; "I defy anyone to finish FREEDOM'S CHILD without a tear in their eye, a sense of meeting a great spirit, and an inspiration to act with generosity and justice."--Gloria Steinem; A BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB and QUALITY PAPERBACK BOOK CLUB SELECTION.

This work examines slave emancipation and opposition to it as a far-reaching, national event with profound social, political, and cultural consequences. The author analyzes multiple views of the African American child to demonstrate how Americans contested and defended slavery and its abolition.

This sequel to 1998's award-winning Lest We Forget chronicles the jubilation and despair of newly freed slaves turned loose, as Frederick Douglass put it, "to the wrath of our infuriated masters." Without land, money or education, former slaves had to fend for themselves in the hostile environment of a vanquished South. Covering the period from the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation to the start of the Great Migration, Freedom's Children tells the stories of courageous African-Americans who struggled to construct schools and establish businesses while trying to reunite families scattered by slavery. Even the creation of the Freedmen's Bureau could do little to provide real help. So they learned to make their own opportunities, often in other parts of the country. Extraordinary interactive elements bring the lives of these American heroes into chilling focus. Readers can examine the "Freedman's Third Reader" used to teach former slaves to read, open a change pouch and touch "script" money paid to sharecroppers for use in the company store, peruse an account book from the Freedman's Bank, and much more. Freedom's Children is an unforgettable reading -- and interactive -- experience.

A heart-stopping debut thriller about a woman named Freedom, who will stop at nothing to save the daughter she only knew for two minutes and seventeen seconds.