Watsons Go to Birmingham

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 work-
ers 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 noth-
ing 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, gain-
ing 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., deliv-
er 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 oth-
ers 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 unfair-
ly, 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 out-
side and play.

One of them may be you.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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.

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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