Pictured here is Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, on September 4, 1957, being verbally abused by a young woman as she attempts to enter the school.
The desegregation of Little Rock Central High School is one of the most significant events in the Civil Rights Movement.
Soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army push white students away with their rifles so that the Little Rock Nine may safely enter Central High School.
Four black students attempt to enter North Little Rock High School on September 10, 1957. No National Guardsmen were present, but the police escorted the black students away after a mob hurling taunts and threats prevented them from entering.
A black girl is protected by a National Guardsman as she makes her way to Little Rock High School in 1957.
A high school in Norfolk, Virginia, Norview Senior High, is integrated in February of 1959. Here two of five black students assigned to this previously all-white school are surrounded by students and journalists as they enter the building.
Patricia Turner, one of the five black students registered at Norview Senior High School, sits in class among her fellow students.
Police officers in Jackson, Mississippi, escort a group of black students out of the Jackson Public Library after they had entered the main library building, which was reserved for white use only.
Four black college students held a sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, in February of 1960. The sit-in was a peaceful protest and part of a series of sit-ins that led to policy change by the store and increased national awareness of the Civil Rights Movement. This Woolworth’s store is now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum. On the first day of the sit-in, the four men ordered coffee, but were refused service at the “Whites Only” counter and asked to leave by the store’s manager. The next day, twenty more students joined the original Greensboro Four. While the black students were taunted by white customers, they remained at the lunch counter, reading and studying quietly. The press covered this day of protest, and with each consecutive day, more black protesters appeared at the sit-in. Still, Woolworth’s declined to serve the black students. This movement spread to other cities throughout the South, and the sit-ins continued. Finally, black students began a boycott of stores that had segregated lunch counters, and after sales at these stores dropped significantly, the managers and owners at last agreed to abandon their segregationist policies.
On July 25, 1960, black employees of the Greensboro Woolworth’s were the first to be served at the store’s lunch counter. The entire Woolworth’s chain was desegregated the next day.
The tension at a lunch counter in Portsmouth, Virginia, is nearly visible in the minutes before a fight broke out between white students and black youths who sought service at this previously segregated cafeteria.
Protesters march for civil rights on August 28, 1963, at the March on Washington, a landmark demonstration of the Civil Rights Movement.
Thurgood Marshall walks out of the Supreme Court building.
Jackie Robinson, American baseball player and hero of the Civil Rights Movement.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., in his office in Atlanta, Georgia, where a photograph of Mahatma Gandhi hangs. Gandhi’s discipline of nonviolent protest inspired King and his followers.
Rosa Parks, who is sometimes known as the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement,” touched off the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott in December 1955, after she refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger.
Mary McLeod Bethune with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The two were close friends.
Claudette Colvin was the first person of color to protest bus segregation, refusing to give up her seat to a white person on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, at the age of fifteen. She was taken off the bus and arrested by two police officers.
Ruby Bridges was the first black child to integrate a previously all-white elementary school, when she attended the William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the age of six.
A map of the continental United States showing the legality of school segregation state by state, before the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
Real People Mentioned in Dawnie Rae’s Diary
Mary McLeod Bethune Mary was an educator who founded Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida. This college began as an all-black grade school. Legend says that Mary earned money to keep the school going by baking and selling sweet potato pies. Mary worked to get President Franklin D. Roosevelt elected. The president appointed her as a member of his Black Cabinet. In this role, Mary advised the president on the concerns of African Americans.
Harry F. Byrd Byrd was elected the fiftieth governor of Virginia. He later became a U.S. senator, who exercised his political power to oppose school integration. Byrd’s Massive Resistance program worked to maintain segregation in schools throughout Virginia, forcing them to close by withdrawing funds. Though Byrd had many followers, his Massive Resistance did not last.
Claudette Colvin In 1955, Claudette was fifteen years old. She was a student at Booker T. Washington High School in Montgomery, Alabama, where she lived. Like many residents of Montgomery, Claudette rode segregated city buses. On March 2, 1955, Claudette refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white person. This courageous act occurred nine months before Rosa Parks took the same brave action by also refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus.
George E. C. Hayes George Edward Chalmers Hayes was a Washington, D.C., lawyer who was a leader in arguing Bolling v. Sharpe, a case similar to Brown v. Board of Education.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was one of the foremost civil rights leaders of all time. A clergyman and social activist, King became known throughout the world for his beliefs and teachings of nonviolence in the face of America’s turbulent racial segregation of the 1950s and 1960s. King is perhaps best remembered for his landmark “I Have a Dream” speech delivered at the March on Washington in 1963. In 1964, King was the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial inequality.
Thurgood Marshall Marshall was an attorney who started his career working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He later argued before the Supreme Court on the Brown v. Board of Education case. This experience prepared Marshall to become the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States.
James M. Nabrit Nabrit was a leading civil rights lawyer who worked with George E. C. Hayes on the Bolling v. Sharpe case. Nabrit also served as an attorney on several cases for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Jackie Robinson Jack Roosevelt “Jackie” Robinson was the first black player in Major League Baseball in modern history. Jackie broke baseball’s invisible “color line” in 1947 when he first appeared as a player for the Brooklyn Dodgers. For sixty years before Jackie debuted with the Dodgers, black baseball players could only play for the Negro Leagues. Thanks to Jackie, racial segregation in professional baseball came to an end.
Thomas B. Stanley Stanley served as governor of Virginia from 1954–1958, during the height of the school integration controversy. Shortly after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, Stanley encouraged the people of Virginia to accept integration. But he was soon swayed by Virginia’s strong segregationists’ beliefs, and by the powerful strategies set forth by Harry F. Byrd’s Massive Resistance program.
About Negro History Week
Negro History Week was created by historian Carter G. Woodson to bring national attention to the achievements of black people in America. Woodson chose the second week of February for Negro History Week because it marks the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.
Negro History Week became Black History Month in 1976, and in recent years has been renamed African American History Month.
Civil Rights Timeline
Here are importa
nt civil rights events that would have happened during Dawnie Rae’s lifetime.
1954 May 17 The Supreme Court rules against segregation in public schools in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
1955 August 28 Emmett Louis Till, a fourteen-year-old boy from Mississippi, is lynched for supposedly whistling at a white woman. The crime draws widespread media attention.
December 1 Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress from Montgomery, Alabama, refuses to give up her seat to a white man at the front of a segregated bus. This act of bravery ignites the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. African Americans refuse to ride city buses for more than one year. After a Supreme Court ruling on December 21, 1956, Montgomery, Alabama, buses are desegregated.
1957 January–February The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is established with the help of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who becomes the SCLC’s first president. The SCLC promotes nonviolence as a means for social change.
September The Little Rock Nine, a group of black students in Little Rock, Arkansas, enroll in Central High School, an all-white school. Arkansas governor Orval Faubus prevents the students from entering the school. The students are allowed to enter when President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends the National Guard to protect them.
1960 February 1 Four African American college freshmen sit at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. They refuse to leave the counter until they are served. As a result, the Greensboro sit-ins begin, and spark sit-ins throughout the nation.
April Activist Ella Baker helps form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at Shaw University in North Carolina. The group’s purpose is to help young people organize peaceful civil rights demonstrations.
1961 May 4 Thousands of student volunteers begin “Freedom Rides” throughout the South. To test laws that prohibit segregation, these young people, black and white, travel on buses together. The students must endure violence. They are supported by SNCC and the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE).
1962 October 1 James Meredith is the first African American student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. James is met by angry mobs. President John F. Kennedy sends 5,000 federal troops to help.
1963 April 16 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., writes his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” after being arrested and put in jail during a protest in Birmingham, Alabama. His letter outlines the meaning of justice.
August 28 Nearly 250,000 people gather at the Lincoln Memorial as part of the March on Washington. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivers his world-famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
1964 July 2 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlaws racial segregation in public places.
About the Author
Andrea Davis Pinkney is the New York Times best-selling and award-winning author of many books for children and young adults, including picture books, novels, works of historical fiction, and nonfiction.
She is the author of several notable titles, including the historical fiction novel Bird in a Box and the nonfiction picture books Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up By Sitting Down, a Parents’ Choice Award winner and winner of the Carter G. Woodson Award for historical works for young people; Sojourner Truth’s Step-Stomp Stride, a Jane Addams Honor Book and School Library Journal Best Book of the Year; the Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book Let it Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters; Duke Ellington, a Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King Honor Book; and Boycott Blues: How Rosa Parks Inspired a Nation, winner of the Anne Izard Storyteller’s Choice Award. Andrea was named one of the “25 Most Influential People in Our Children’s Lives” by Children’s Health Magazine.
She lives in New York City with her husband and frequent collaborator, award-winning illustrator Brian Pinkney, and their two children.
About writing With the Might of Angels, Andrea says, “I come from a long line of civil rights activists, the closest to me being my late father, Philip J. Davis. In 1959 Dad was selected as one of the first African American student interns in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was later named by the White House as the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of labor and director of the office of federal contract compliance.
“In this role, Dad became the prime author of federal affirmative action legislation. Additionally, he advised several presidential administrations on the legalities of fair labor practices for African Americans and women.
“When I was six years old, Dad enrolled me in first grade at an all-white elementary school, where I was the only black student. (Mom was a teacher at a school in another district, so it was Dad’s job to escort me to Mrs. Lewis’s class.)
“Recently, in speaking to my mom about my experience of going to an all-white grade school, I asked if Dad had any involvement in the legislation surrounding school integration or the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling. Mom’s first answer was no, but she then dug through Dad’s personal belongings and memorabilia from his days on Capitol Hill, and found a weighty three-ring binder from a civil rights conference Dad had attended. The notebook’s cover was marked BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION — ‘Confronting the Promise.’ The gathering of civil rights leaders commemorated the fortieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. It had been held in Williamsburg, Virginia, and focused on school integration in the state of Virginia.
“Dad’s family is originally from Culpeper, Virginia, and he was always very proud of this. He took great care in learning about Virginia’s history, politics, and the legacy of African Americans in Virginia.
“I pored over the binder’s pages, a comprehensive collection of materials Dad had saved, including news articles, litigation documents, magazine editorials on school integration, copies of archival photographs, state maps, and more.
“The notebook was divided into tabbed sections. There was one entitled ‘The Virginia Experience,’ which contained an assortment of articles about school integration written in the mid 1950s and early 1960s. These were published in U.S. News & World Report, the Saturday Evening Post, Newsweek, and other publications.
“(Like Dawnie’s daddy, my own father was an avid reader of newspapers and periodicals. And, he collected documents and papers that were of special interest to him.)
“The pages in Dad’s binder whopped me on the head like a two-by-four — they told such a compelling story!
“Though I’d attended the all-white elementary school more than a decade after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, I still felt a keen sense of loneliness and isolation as the school’s only black student. I didn’t experience the torment Dawnie did, but was plagued by a phenomenon I’ve come to call ‘anxious apartness.’
“As a child, I could not fully understand or articulate these feelings, but they were very real.
“Dad’s collection of materials and my own school experience compelled me to craft a school integration story for today’s readers.
“Dawnie Rae Johnson’s diary is a fictionalized account of the events surrounding school integration in the state of Virginia. Dawnie’s narrative is inspired by several harrowing integration stories, including that of my own cousin John Mullen, who, as a direct result of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, integrated Homer L. Ferguson High School in Newport News, Virginia. I also spoke to others who shared similar struggles and triumphs at school.
“Integration at the Fort Myer military base in Virginia serves as the model for this book’s fictional town, Hadley, which, for the purposes of this story, is set in Lee County, a real county in the state of Virginia.
“In order to align the dates of Dawnie’s diary with the day upon which the Brown v. Board of Education ruling happened, I’ve begun her story in May 1954.
“Though most schools did not integrate at that time, I felt it important to directly link the Brown v. Board of Education decision with immediate school integration, so that young readers could connect the two. Also, setting the diary narratives in 1954�
��1955 enabled the story to include pivotal civil rights and historical events that occurred during that time, and that had a direct effect on school integration.
“Although this diary is a work of fiction, many of the events cited actually happened on the dates they occur in the book. These include the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling, the appointment of Governor Thomas B. Stanley’s Commission on Public Education, the formation of the Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberties, the Montgomery, Alabama, bus protest of young Claudette Colvin, the premiere of Sports Illustrated magazine, and the folding of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. The facts about Jackie Robinson are also true.
“While the appearance of Martin Luther King, Jr., at Dawnie’s church is fiction, young Martin visited many different churches throughout the South, where he encouraged members to become registered voters and active members of the NAACP. He also preached the importance of nonviolence.
“In 1954, Martin became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. It was at this time that his career as a preacher and civil rights leader began to gain public recognition.
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