Pinkney, Andrea Davis

Presents profiles of ten African-American women whose efforts on behalf of racial justice and freedom have influenced the course of history.

In 1955 Hadley, Virginia, twelve-year-old Dawnie Rae Johnson, a tomboy who excels at baseball and at her studies, becomes the first African American student to attend the all-white Prettyman Coburn school, turning her world upside down. Includes historical notes about the period.

In 1862 eleven-year-old Summer and her thirteen-year-old brother Rosco take turns describing how life on the quiet Virginia plantation where they are slaves is affected by the Civil War.

Describes the origins and practices of Kwanzaa, the seven-day festival during which people of African descent rejoice in their ancestral values.

Uses the form of a blues song to share the story of the year-long bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, sparked by seamstress Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger in 1955, which resulted in a repeal of the Jim Crow segregation laws.