Before the Little Rock Nine, before Rosa Parks, before Martin Luther
King Jr. and his March on Washington, there was Barbara Rose Johns, a
teenager who used nonviolent civil disobedience to draw attention to her
cause. In 1951, witnessing the unfair conditions in her racially
segregated high school, Barbara Johns led a walkout--the first public
protest of its kind demanding racial equality in the U.S.--jumpstarting
the American civil rights movement. Ridiculed by the white
superintendent and school board, local newspapers, and others, and even
after a cross was burned on the school grounds, Barbara and her
classmates held firm and did not give up. Her school's case went all the
way to the Supreme Court and helped end segregation as part of Brown v.
Board of Education.
Barbara Johns grew up to become a librarian in the Philadelphia school
system. The Girl from the Tar Paper School mixes biography with social
history and is illustrated with family photos, images of the school and
town, and archival documents from classmates and local and national news
media. The book includes a civil rights timeline, bibliography, and
index. Praise for The Girl from the Tar Paper School
An important glimpse into the early civil rights movement.
--Kirkus Reviews
Based largely on interviews, memoirs, and other primary source material,
and liberally illustrated with photographs, this well-researched slice
of civil rights history will reward readers who relish true stories of
unsung heroes.
--The Bulletin of The Center for Children's Books
