Students on Strike: Jim Crow, Civil Rights, Brown, and Me
Several years prior to the Supreme Court’s desegregation order, students at an all-black high school in Prince Edward County, Virginia, were driven to strike against the terrible conditions there. Their complaints were eventually folded into the class-action-suit Brown v. Board of Education, and this fascinating account, co-written by Stokes, who was one of the strike’s leaders, explains how, with NAACP guidance, the strikers’ efforts to “correct a molehill” shifted to a larger battle. Although the book initially provides powerful, personal details about injustices Stokes experienced in the Jim Crow South, autobiographical elements are eventually subsumed by the collective action, described in positive tones somewhat at odds with the closing admission of rifts in the black community over the strike’s aftermath (schools were closed for more than five years). One is left wondering if there’s more to the story than is celebrated here, but little can undermine the inspirational aspects of the strike, which will motivate and guide young activists today. A section of small black-and-white photographs, a bibliography, and a resource list are included. Grades 5-8. --Jennifer Mattson