to liberate India from British rule. Sit-ins and boycotts of stores and public transportation applied economic pressure. Freedom Riders— African Americans and whites—took bus trips throughout the South to test federal laws that banned segregation in interstate transportation. Black students had enrolled in segregated schools such as Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the University of Alabama. Picketing, protest marches, and demonstrations made headlines. Civil rights workers carried out programs for voter education and registration.The goal was to create tension and provoke confrontations that would force the federal government to step in and enforce the laws. Often the tension exploded into gunshots, fires and bombings directed against the people who so bravely fought for change. The characters and events in this novel are fictional. However, there were many unsolved bombings in Birmingham at the time of the story, including the one that took place at the Sixteenth Avenue Baptist Church on September 15, 1963. Four young-teenage girls— Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley—were killed when a bomb went off during Sunday school. Addie Mae Collins’s sister, Sarah, had to have an eye removed, and another girl was blinded. In the unrest that followed the bombing, two other African American children died. Sixteen-year-old Johnny Robinson was shot to death by police, and thirteen-year-old Virgil Wade was murdered by two white boys.Although these may be nothing more than names in a book to you now, you must remember that these children were just as precious to their families as Joetta was to the Watsons or as your brothers and sisters are to you. Despite the danger, the civil rights movement grew stronger, gaining support all over the country. On August 28, 1963, two hundred thousand people marched on Washington, D.C., to pressure Congress to pass the Civil Rights Bill, and heard Martin Luther King, Jr., deliver his unforgettable “I have a dream” speech. President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Bill on July 2, 1964, and signed the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965. In 1968 Congress passed the Fair Housing Act. The individuals who supported the civil rights movement took great risks to force America to change. It was a people’s movement, inspired by the courageous acts of ordinary citizens like Rosa Parks, 140
the seamstress from Montgomery, Alabama, who began the first great effort of the movement—the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56— when she refused to give up her seat to a white man. Many heroic people died in the struggle for civil rights. Many others were injured or arrested or lost their homes or businesses. It is almost impossible to imagine the courage of the first African American children who walked into segregated schools or the strength of the parents who permitted them to face the hatred and violence that awaited them.They did it in the name of the movement, in the quest for freedom. These people are the true American heroes.They are the boys and girls, the women an men who have seen that things are wrong and have not been afraid to ask “Why can’t we change this?”They are the people who believe that as long as one person is being treated unfairly, we all are.These are our heroes, and they still walk among us today. One of them may be sitting next to you as you read this, or standing in the next room making your dinner, or waiting for you to come outside and play. One of them may be you. 141
Christopher Paul Curtis won the Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award for his bestselling second novel, Bud, Not Buddy. His first novel, The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, was also singled out for many awards, among them a Newbery Honor and a Coretta Scott King Honor, and has been a bestseller in hardcover and paperback. Christopher Paul Curtis grew up in Flint, Michigan. After high school he began working on the assembly line at the Fisher Body Plant No.1 while attending the Flint branch of the University of Michigan. Today he is a full-time writer. He and his wife, Kay, have two children, Steven and Cydney.The Curtis family lives in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. 142 ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DON’T MISS Bud, Not Buddy Winner of the Newbery Medal by Christopher Paul Curtis It’s 1936, in Flint, Michigan.Times may be hard, and ten-year-old Bud may be a motherless boy on the run. But Bud’s got a few things going for him: 1. He has his own suitcase filled with his own important, secret things. 2. He’s the author of Bud Caldwell’s Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself 3. Bud’s momma never told him who his father was, but she left a clue: posters of Herman E. Calloway and his famous band, the Dusky Devastators of the Depression!!!!!! Bud’s got an idea that those posters will lead him to his father. Once he decides to hit the road and find this mystery man, nothing can stop him—not hunger, not cops, not vampires, not even Herman E. Calloway himself. Bud, Not Buddy is full of laugh-out-loud humor and wonderful characters, hitting the high notes ofjazz and sounding the deeper tones of the Great Depression. Once again Christopher Paul Curtis takes readers on a heartwarming and unforgettable journey. * “A crackerjack read-aloud.” —School Library Journal, Starred * “A remarkable and disarming mix of comedy and pathos. . . . Bud’s journey, punctuated by Dickensian twists in plot and enlivened by a host of memorable personalities, will keep readers engrossed from first to last.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred