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    The First Step: How One Girl Put Segregation on Trial
    Unavailable
    The First Step: How One Girl Put Segregation on Trial
    Unavailable
    The First Step: How One Girl Put Segregation on Trial
    Ebook38 pages1 hour

    The First Step: How One Girl Put Segregation on Trial

    By Susan E. Goodman and E.B. Lewis

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The inspiring story of four-year-old Sarah Roberts, the first African American girl to try to integrate a white school, and how her experience in 1847 set greater change in motion.

    Junior Library Guild Selection
    2017 Orbis Pictus Honor Book
    Chicago Public LibraryKids Best of the Best Book 2016
    A Nerdy Book Club Best Nonfiction Book of 2016
    An NCSS Notable Social Studies Trade Book of 2017

    In 1847, a young African American girl named Sarah Roberts was attending a school in Boston. Then one day she was told she could never come back. She didn't belong. The Otis School was for white children only.

    Sarah deserved an equal education, and the Roberts family fought for change. They made history. Roberts v. City of Boston was the first case challenging our legal system to outlaw segregated schools. It was the first time an African American lawyer argued in a supreme court.

    These first steps set in motion changes that ultimately led to equality under the law in the United States. Sarah's cause was won when people--black and white--stood together and said, No more. Now, right now, it is time for change!

    With gorgeous art from award-winning illustrator E. B. Lewis, The First Step is an inspiring look at the first lawsuit to demand desegregation--long before the American Civil Rights movement, even before the Civil War.

    Backmatter includes: integration timeline, bios on key people in the book, list of resources, and author's note.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateJan 5, 2016
    ISBN9780802737410
    Unavailable
    The First Step: How One Girl Put Segregation on Trial
    Author

    Susan E. Goodman

    Susan E. Goodman is the author of more than thirty nonfiction books for children, including How Do You Burp in Space?; See How They Run: Campaign Dreams, Election Schemes, and the Race to the White House;All in Just One Cookie, an ALA Notable Book; and On This Spot, a Washington Post Top Picture Book of the Year. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts. www.susangoodmanbooks.com

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    4.5/5

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    • 5/5
      historical fiction
    • 5/5
      In a stunning tour de force that captures the heartbreak of the long road to justice, Goodman begins in 1847 on the streets of Boston as four-year old Sarah Roberts heads to school. With E. B. Lewis’s brilliant watercolor drawings, readers see Sarah in the classroom, one lone black face amongst her white peers. One day, a policeman entered the class and kicked her out. Although her parents took the risk to send their daughter to Otis School, the best in the city, they knew that it was against Massachusetts’s law for black and white children to attend together. Angry, they took their case to court. Despite the eloquent pleas of two lawyers, one white, one black, the Roberts lost, but the steps toward change had begun. People rallied behind the cause and in 1855, Boston’s schools were the first to be officially integrated. The book does not end there, however, but caps Roberts’ case with the Brown vs. Board case argued almost 100 years later, finally declaring that “separate schools can never be equal.” A timeline of integration, follow up to the heroes of the stories (the Roberts’ family members and the lawyers), sources, and a detailed author’s note about “gathering facts from places we trust” and acknowledging authorial choices about language add a significant dimension to this amazing story.