Freedom Summer
written by Deborah Wiles
illustrated by Jerome Lagarrigue

"A quiet but powerful introduction to the prejudice experienced by many Americans." —Starred review, Kirkus Reviews

"Powerfully conveys the experience of racial prejudice by focusing on two particular boys and their real-live-boy feelings and behavior." —Horn Book magazine

• Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe new talent award for Jerome Lagarrigue
• Ezra Jack Keats/New York Public Library award, best new picturebook writer of the year, and best new illustrator, 2002.
  scroll down for complete awards list...

From the book:
John Henry swims better than anyone I know.
He crawls like a catfish,
blows bubbles like a swamp monster,
but he doesn't swim in the town pool with me.
He's not allowed.

Joe and John Henry are a lot alike. They both like shooting marbles, they both want to be firemen, and they both love to swim.

But there's one important way they're different: Joe is white and John Henry is black, and in the South in 1964, that means John Henry isn't allowed to do everything his best friend is.

Then a law is passed that forbids segregation and opens the town pool to everyone. Joe and John Henry are so excited they race each other there ... only to discover that it takes more than a new law to change people's hearts.

This stirring account of the "Freedom Summer" that followed the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 powerfully and poignantly captures two boys' experience with racism and their friendship that defied it.

Picture book, for all ages.

Author's Note from Freedom Summer:

In the early 1960s, the American South had long been a place where black Americans could not drink from the same drinking fountain as whites, attend the same schools, or enjoy the same public areas. Then the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law and stated that "All persons shall be entitled tot he full and equal enjoyment" of any public place, regardless of "... race, color, religion, or national origin."

I was born a white child in Mobile, Alabama, and spent summers visiting my beloved Mississippi relatives. When the Civil Rights Act was passed, the town pool closed. So did the roller rink and the ice-cream parlor. Rather than lawfully giving blacks the same rights and freedoms as whites, many southern businesses chose to shut their doors in protest. Some of them closed forever.

Also in the summer of 1964, civil rights workers in Mississippi organized "Freedom Summer," a movement to register black Americans to vote. It was a time of great racial violence and change. That was the summer I began to pay attention: I noticed that black Americans used back doors, were waited on only after every white had been helped, and were treated poorly, all because of the color of their skin ... and no matter what any law said. I realized that a white person openly having a black friend, and vice versa, could be a dangerous thing.

I couldn't get these thoughts and images out of my mind, and I wondered what it must be like to be a black child my age. I dreamed about changing things, and yet I wondered what any child—black or white—could do.

This story grew out of my feelings surrounding that time. It is fiction, but based on real events.

Reviews & Awards for
Freedom Summer

Reviews

• "A quiet but powerful introduction to the prejudice experienced by many Americans." —Starred review, Kirkus Reviews
• "Powerfully conveys the experience of racial prejudice by focusing on two particular boys and their real-live-boy feelings and behavior." —Horn Book magazine
• "Illustrations that stun." —Booklist
• "Wiles's affecting debut children's book about two boys—one white and the other African-American—underscores the bittersweet aftermath of the passage of the Civil Rights Act." —Publishers Weekly

Awards

• Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe new talent award 2002, American Library Association
• Ezra Jack Keats/New York Public Library award for best new picturebook writer of the year, and best new illustrator 2002
• Simon Wiesenthal "Once Upon A World Award"
• Junior Library Guild Selection
• Notable Book in the field of Social Studies, National Council of the Social Studies
• Oprah Winfrey Book Club for Kids Selection
  Children's Literature Choice List
• Nominated for the Georgia State Picturebook Award 2002
• Nominated for the Florida State Reading Assn. Children's Book Award 2002-2003
• Nominated for the North Carolina Children's Book award, junior book category 2004.
• Nominated for the California Young Reader medal 2004-1005.