As the civil rights movement in the South gains momentum in 1963--and violence against African Americans intensifies--the black residents, including seventh-grader Addie Ann Pickett, in the small town of Kuckachoo, Mississippi, begin their own courageous struggle for racial justice.

In the summer of 1968, after travelling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.

It was 1961. John Lewis and Jim Zwerg are two young men boarding a bus and heading south for Montgomery, Alabama and the thick of the brewing Civil Rights struggle. They are idealists, committed to justice and equality and full of hope for change. This is their Freedom Ride. Arriving in town, suddenly they find themselves helpless in the clutches of an angry white mob armed with bats, chains, and hammers. Both men are beaten within an inch of their...