John Lewis: Getting to Know the Statesman Who Marched for Civil Rights by Jehan Jones Radgowski

In 1965 John Lewis organized a peaceful protest in Selma, Alabama,... to improve voter rights. The first protest took place on March 7. John planned to march from Selma to Montgomery (the state capital). As they crossed the bridge just outside Selma. Alabama state troopers demanded they turn around. Those who did not do so were beaten by police officers. John Lewis's skull was fractured.

Journalists called it "Bloody Sunday." News stations broadcast the images around the world. People were horrified to see violence used against peaceful protesters. Bloody Sunday was a turning point in the civil rights movement. President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965.

John was born in Troy, Alabama, where he attended a two-room school for black children when he wasn't need to help on his family's farm. As he grew up, Rosa Parks' arrest led the Montgomery bus boycott. Black students led the "sit-ins" which tried to integrate eating places. As a student participated in the "Freedom Riders," who attempted to integrate public accommodations such as buses and trains. One bus was hit and by a firebomb. "Burn them alive," the attackers yelled. But the Riders were sworn to non-violence and they persisted until segregation in public facilities was made illegal by Congress.

John was willing to risk everything for equality. But it was only the beginning of his battle.

There was much more to be done. John Lewis went to college and finally was elected a congressman from Georgia in 1986, where he has served since.

George Lewis has been there through it all, and he still serves in Congress, the last surviving member of the "Big Six," civil rights leaders who worked with Martin Luther King. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011 and helped bring about the National Museum of African American History opened in 2016. Jehan Jones-Radgowski's John Lewis: Get to Know the Statesman Who Marched for Civil Rights (People You Should Know) (Capstone Books, 2019) is a brief biography of Lewis which also incorporates the significant moments in the civil rights movement. Brief and succinct, this 32-page non-fiction book covers a lot of ground in American history.  With ample historic illustrations, and names, dates and places, this entry in Capstone's People You Should Know series puts the biography of John Lewis in its historical setting, and includes a glossary, a short bibliography and list of internet sources, and an index to help young researchers in those Black History Month presentations and reports.

Overboard! The Boy Who Fell Off the Mayflower, Or, John Howland's Good Fortune by P. J. Lynch

It was all because of the King that we had to leave England.

Our Elders decided we would take our chances in the New World.

In 1620, young John Howland bid his family farewell and cast his lot with the Puritans who elected to leave their homes to seek freedom from persecution by the Church of England for their Calvinist leanings. Still a teenager, John, called Jack, indentured himself to John Carver, boarding a small ship called the Mayflower, sailing secretly before dawn with the tide.

"We've sold all our possessions, John. There's no going back," said Elder William Brewster.

And once out upon the "Vast and Furious Ocean," young Jack encounters very bad luck indeed. He is called on deck to help repair a critical timber shivered by the wind, just as a great wave strikes the ship.

A huge wave hit and sent me flying over the side.

Sinking in the silence of the icy green water below the ship, John despairs of his life. Then he sees a rope trailing behind the Mayflower and he seems to hear his mother's voice.

"Wake up, John Howland," I heard.

Lord God, the rope was in my hand!

And John Howland's good fortune continues with a speedy recovery from near death in the sea. But the voyage itself seems ill-fated, arriving not in Virginia near earlier English settlers, but making landfall on a barren and forbidding shore.

"That ain't Virginia, son!" said seaman Bob Coppin. "That's Cape Cod. None of us will survive if we don't stay together!"

Stay together they do, and launching their small shallop, John and the seamen sail along the coast until they locate a small harbor where the weary travelers come ashore. But fate is not fortunate for most of them, and the little settlement of New Plymouth sees the majority of them die before the long winter ends. However, John Howland survives to see Samoset and then Squanto appear to help them raise their crops.  He helps build a common house and then dwellings for the families, working alongside the other indentured servants, including one young girl, Lizzie Tilley, who catches his eye.

And when his master, John Carver and his wife die within a month of each other, young John is left a substantial inheritance.

"Now I was left without a master. I was a free and equal man."

And when the good ship Fortune arrives to resupply the settlers, John longs to take it back to London, but when Lizzie Tilley declines to go with him, he watches the Fortune sail away without him, casting his lot with Lizzie and a new life in New Plymouth. P. J. Lynch's The Boy Who Fell Off the Mayflower, or John Howland's Good Fortune (Candlewick Press, 2015) retells the familiar story of the Plymouth colony as it has not been told before, through the written words and eyes of young Jack, perhaps the luckiest colonist in American history. For as Lynch's author's note tells us, Jack's good luck holds, as the ill-named Fortune falls upon French pirates, never to see the port of London, while John Howland becomes a prominent citizen in the colony, and he and Tilly and their ten children establish a family which now numbers millions of American descendants.

Lynch's simple but strong narration is paired with his stunningly cinematographic gouache paintings, which use various perspectives and vivid light and shadow to delineate the settlers and the Wamponoags, giving new life to the familiar story of the first Thanksgiving and Pilgrim Fathers in striking illustrations that middle readers will not soon forget. Says Kirkus in a starred review, "Based on historical fact, this feast of a book will captivate readers from its opening double-page spread. Sweeping and grand, this personal take on a familiar story is an engaging success."

First Steps! March: Book One by John Lewis

By noon, thousands of people had gathered at Tennessee State University to march on City Hall.

Martin Luther King came and said, "I came to Nashville not to bring inspiration but to gain inspiration from the great movement that has taken place in this community.

No lie can live forever. Let us not despair.

Walk together, children."

It makes sense that the progress of  American civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s came to be called "The Movement," because sitting down, and standing up for equal rights, walking, and marching en masse all played a pivotal role. As one elderly  Montgomery bus-boycotting grandmother, trudging to work, said, "I'm not walking for myself. I'm walking for my children and my grandchildren."

John Lewis and Andrew Aydin's 2014 Coretta Scott King Award-winning March:  Book 1 (Top Shelf Productions, 2013) begins with a dream sequence as a crowd begins its ill-fated march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, a dark dream from which Congressman John Lewis awakens early on January 20, 2009, Inauguration Day.

As Lewis enters his office at the Capitol that morning, a mother and a couple of children happen by, and he invites them in. As he explains the photos and framed documents on his wall, Lewis tell the boys about his sharecropping childhood, his beloved flock of chickens, his struggles to stay in school even when his father ordered him to stay home to work on the farm, and how his early experiences brought him to be on Edmund Pettus Bridge that day, to be beaten senseless, but to survive to help lead the Civil Rights Movement forward.

But his role didn't begin at the March from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.  It really began when he and others schooled in the ways of non-violent resistance began sit-ins in Nashville, Tennessee. Students from nearby Tennessee State University organized sit-ins at lunch counters downtown. At first they politely left when service was refused, but as the movement grew, white students joined them. Still refused, they tried a new tactic. They simply sat and did not leave. The lunch counters were closed, and the lights were turned off, and still they remained. Arrested, they refused bail and filled the local jail.

Frustrated, the police considered leaving the demonstrators to the groups of armed whites, people who boasted they would beat the students until they gave up. Finally a leader's home was bombed. A call went out and the students were able to bring forth thousands of black and white supporters who filled the streets of downtown Nashville, all marching to City Hall to call out the Mayor. The Mayor agreed that their cause was just, and soon Nashville quietly integrated its public places. It was only one step on the road to full civil rights, but those relentlessly marching feet finally changed the country.

Written in the format of a graphic novel, this graphic memoir traces one major episode of the Civil Rights Movement witnessed by John Lewis as he lived it. Drawn in black and white with great impact by Nate Powell, the neo-comic-book format offers a new way for middle readers to experience these signal events through the eyes of someone still living, someone who was there to take every step, from Nashville, to Selma, to the March on Washington, and through a long career in Congress. Along with other first-person accounts, this book offers young people a unique chance to understand that critical period in American history. Kirkus Reviews calls this one "... a powerful tale of courage and principle igniting sweeping social change, told by a strong-minded, uniquely qualified eyewitness."

To round out a unit for Black History Month, include this new one with Russell Freedman's Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Andrea Davis Pinkney's account of the Greensboro sit-ins, Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down (Jane Addams Honor Book (Awards)), Shelley Tougas' Little Rock Girl 1957: How a Photograph Changed the Fight for Integration (Captured History), Kathleen Krull's What Was the March on Washington? and Cristine King Farris' March On!: The Day My Brother Martin Changed the World.

Music As Grace: Spirit Seeker: John Coltrane's Musical Journey by Gary Golio

A warm light filled the small church.

John smiled as his mother pressed the organ key, calling choir voices to soar through the air above her head. A part of him soared, too.

Suddenly the fiery voice of Reverend Blair made John sit up. Always full of questions–about God, about everything–John took in every word. His grandfather spoke about the power of the Spirit to guide and and heal–no matter what.

This was a promise John would never forget.

For the young John Coltrane his first twelve years were joyful and warm, filled with the music of his father’s singing, the sounds of the organ and choir, and the joys of family life in his grandfather’s big house with his parents and his cousin Mary’s family. But with the death of his grandfather, father, and uncle in close succession, the family lost its anchor and its music. John’s loss brought deep sadness, until another minister, recruiting young people for a church band, found him a used saxophone. John began to make his own music again.

The young Coltrane threw himself wholeheartedly into making music with that horn, practicing whenever he could, even sleeping with the precious horn near him. Listening to the radio, he heard big band jazz and found the sounds he had been missing:

One of John’s favorite musicians was Lester Young, who played tenor saxophone. Lester’s sound was bouncy, but deep, laughter sprinkled with tears.

For John, it was like an echo of Papa’s voice.

John found other musicians to follow, and soon he himself followed them into jazz, always pursuing that “deep music...laughter sprinkled with tears.” He listened to Johnny Hodges and later Charlie “Bird” Parker, hearing sounds that led him on to find that music he held inside. As a young musician he became known, playing with famous bands of the 1940s and early 1950s, touring constantly amid applause and success, but losing touch with his own center, drawn to drink and drugs to fill the void. Restless in spirit, he read about many religions and their own promise of grace.

At last, seemingly lost even amid success, he remembered his grandfather’s preaching, the words promising that “the Spirit would heal–no matter what.” He saw all his studies of religion and philosophy as one, offering cleansing and hope, if he could but find his way back, open to receive the promise.

Leaving addiction behind, John Coltrane went on to make the most of his gift, His new freedom spilled from his horn in notes that many came to hear.

As in his lauded music biographies of Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan (Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow: A Story of the Young Jimi Hendrix and When Bob Met Woody: The Story of the Young Bob Dylan) with his forthcoming Spirit Seeker: John Coltrane's Musical Journey (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) in simple but lyrical text Gary Golio explores the seminal childhood experiences which shaped the music and life of another iconic American musician, another who took in the myriad musical experiences of his early days to produce something uniquely personal yet universal in his music.

“Laughter sprinkled with tears” is the essence of jazz, and Galio’s narrative paints a word picture of Coltrane’s spiritual journey to describe what he felt and expressed in his music. Golio’s story is carried along by the work of the Belpre’ Award-winning illustrator Rudy Gutierrez, whose expressionistic art swirls and floods the pages with color, flowing in and around the narrative like music floods the senses. Words are a sort of music, and Golio’s words provide a way for middle readers to find their way to the music and what lies inside it.

“Lyrically narrated, resplendently illustrated, and deeply respectful of both subject and audience,” says Kirkus Reviews.