We celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for his actions, his leadership, and his character. The change Dr. King enacted is an incredible legacy. As your children learn about Dr. King, it can help to seek out and share the stories of the everyday people who stood beside civil rights leaders. A movement is filled with many kinds of helpers, and a multitude of smaller actions.
Here are five of our favorite books celebrating these everyday heroes, activists, and organizers. Through stories like theirs our kids can be inspired to find all the ways we can contribute to the causes we care about.
Going out to lunch!
Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down
Written by Andrea Davis Pinkney, illustrated by Brian Pinkney
Seems like a small thing, to choose where you go with your friends to eat lunch, but state-sanctioned segregation meant Black people could not sit at most restaurants’ lunch counters. In this book, four friends carefully plan how they will enter, sit at, and order food from the Woolworth’s “whites only” lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. The book captures both the everyday nature of their action (ordering food) and the courage it took to sit down.
Fundraising!
Pies from Nowhere: How Georgia Gilmore Sustained the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Written by Dee Romito, illustrated by Laura Freeman
Georgia Gilmore was known in her Montgomery, Alabama, community for her cooking. And in 1955 and 1956, she put her skills to work to help raise money for gas and car repairs to help Black people to get to work during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This picture book highlights the logistics and real dangers of these fundraising efforts, while depicting the community’s strength.
Being an ally!
She Stood for Freedom
Written by Loki Mulholland and Angela Fairwell, illustrated by Charlotta Janssen
Growing up white in the South, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland clearly saw ways people received different and unfair treatment based on their skin color. By the time she was in college she was attending protests and sit-ins. One of the Freedom Riders, she was arrested and jailed for months in 1961. Later in life, when asked where her place was in the civil rights movement, she said ''Anyone can make a difference...Find a problem, get some friends together, and go fix it.''
Learning your ABCs!
The Story of Ruby Bridges
Written by Robert Coles, illustrated by George Ford
Ruby Bridges was just six years old when she started school in New Orleans. While the ritual of “first day of school” was playing out all over the country, Ruby was experiencing something very different. In this book, you’ll read about her journey to the school building and her experiences learning in the classroom. The author Robert Coles based the text on his weekly meetings with Ruby throughout her first year at the school.
Skipping school (hear me out)!
Let the Children March
Written by Monica Clark-Robinson and illustrated by Frank Morrison
Cutting classes and ending up in jail? The participants in the Birmingham Children's Crusade did just that but for a good cause. Organized by the students themselves, hundreds of kids—some as young as nine—marched and sang through Birmingham, Alabama, to show their non-violent support for desegregation. The book doesn’t shy away from some of the tougher challenges faced by the young activists, but the story concludes with the children enjoying the previously segregated public spaces.
While these stories are inspirational, we also want to recognize that even the smallest supporters can be subject to retaliation and life-long impacts. Georgia Gilmore lost her job, in part because of her support of the Montgomery bus boycott. Fannie Lou Hamer suffered permanent kidney damage from police beating her after her arrest in Winona, Mississippi, after a voter registration drive. And Ruby Bridges describes her life as having “one foot in the present and one foot in the past,” because of the weight of her actions.
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