New book on young Civil Rights heroine in stores Jan 7
Before the Little Rock Nine, before Rosa Parks, before Martin Luther King Jr. and his March on Washington, there was Barbara Rose Johns, a Prince Edward County, Virginia, teenager who used nonviolent civil disobedience to draw attention to her cause. In 1951, witnessing the unfair conditions at Farmville’s R.R. Moton High School, Barbara Johns led a walkout—the first public protest of its kind demanding racial equality in the U.S.—jumpstarting the American Civil Rights Movement.
The Girl from the Tar Paper School: Barbara Rose Johns and the Advent of the Civil Rights Movement, by author Teri Kanefield, mixes biography with social history, and features never-before-seen family photos, images of the school and town, a civil rights timeline, and archival documents from classmates and news media.
(Above) ESSENCE Magazine’s Patrik Henry Bass names ‘Girl From The Tar Paper School’ his favorite book.
ABRAMS Books, the publisher behind international bestseller and now three-film blockbuster, The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, will release Girl From The Tar Paper School January 7, 2014. The book hits shelves in time for the 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court’s landmark decision desegregating U.S. schools. The April 1951 Moton Student Strike, led by 16-year-old Barbara Johns, produced 75 percent of the plaintiffs in Brown and catapulted Farmville and Prince Edward County, Virginia, to the forefront of America’s fight for integrated education.
Click here to pre-order your copy online. Books will also be on sale in January at our Moton Store, 900 Griffin Blvd, Farmville, VA. Author book-signing events with Teri Kanefield are planned for April and October. Check back later for details.