Separate Is Not Equal - Brown v. Board of Education

Smithsonian National Museum of American History Behring Center


Resources


Children
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Children’s Books (Fiction)

Coles, Robert. The Story of Ruby Bridges. New York: Scholastic, 1995.
The true story of six-year old Ruby Bridges, who relied on police escorts and her own bravery to face the crowds of protestors on the daily walk to her newly integrated school. Ruby’s New Orleans elementary school was integrated in 1960, six years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Evans, Freddi Williams. A Bus of Our Own. Morton Grove, Illinois: Albert Whitman, 2001.
In Madison, Mississippi, in 1949, a bus took the white children to their school while the black children had to walk five miles each way. This book tells the story of how the African American community came together to buy a bus to take their children to school.

McKissack, Patricia. Goin’ Someplace Special. New York: Atheneum, 2001.
Ten year-old Tricia Ann navigates her segregated town on the way to “Someplace Special”—the integrated public library.

Wiles, Deborah. Freedom Summer. New York: Atheneum, 2001.
The story of two boys—one black, one white—who confront the injustices of Jim Crow through their friendship. The book emphasizes the ways that segregation hurt the community as a whole.

Woodson, Jacqueline. The Other Side. New York: Putnam Publishing Group, 2001.
Two young girls develop a friendship across the fence that separates a white family from a black one.