The powerful story of an eleven-year-old Black boy determined to stand
up for his rights, who's pulled into the action of the 1963 civil rights
demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama.
Rufus Jackson Jones is from Birmingham, the place Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr. called the most segregated place in the country. A place that in
1963 is full of civil rights activists including Dr. King. The adults
are trying to get more attention to their cause--to show that separate
is not equal. Rufus's dad works at the local steel factory, and his mom
is a cook at the mill. If they participate in marches, their bosses will
fire them. So that's where the kids decide they will come in. Nobody can
fire them. So on a bright May morning in 1963, Rufus and his buddies
join thousands of other students to peacefully protest in a local park.
There they are met with policemen and firemen who turn their powerful
hoses on them, and that's where Rufus realizes that they are the fire.
And they will not be put out. Shelia Moses gives readers a deeply
personal account of one boy's heroism during what came to be known as
the Children's Crusade in this important novel that highlights a key
turning point in the civil rights movement.