Lesa Cline-Ransome

Discovering a book of Langston Hughes' poetry in the library helps Langston cope with the loss of his mother, relocating from Alabama to Chicago as part of the Great Migration, and being bullied.

Raised by his grandparents, first in Mississippi then in Wisconsin, ten-year-old Lymon moves to Chicago in 1945 to live with the mother he never knew, while yearning for his father. Lymon's father is, for the time being, at Parchman Farm--the Mississippi State Penitentiary--and his mother, whom he doesn't remember all that much, has moved North. Fortunately, Lymon is being raised by his loving grandparents. Together, Lymon and his grandpops share...

"A girl named Ruth Anne tells the story of her family's train journey from North Carolina to New York City as part of the Great Migration"--

"Before Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin made the same choice. She insisted on standing up--or in her case, sitting down--for what was right, and in doing so, fought for equality, fairness, and justice." -- Amazon.com.

"Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005) is a hero and trailblazer. She was the first African American woman in Congress (1968) and the first woman and African American to seek the nomination for president of the United States from one of the two major political parties (1972). Written by award-winning author Lesa Cline-Ransome, here is her story"--

For Helen Keller, "w-a-t-e-r" was a cool, slippery splash. "S-u-n" was the warm afternoon glow coating her skin. "L-i-l-y" was a sweet-smelling petal, soft and delicate to her touch. After an illness left her blind and deaf, Helen relied on her senses of touch and smell to help compensate for her loss. And then she met her teacher, Annie Sullivan, who showed her a new way to give meaning to the world around her. But most of all, Annie gave Helen a...

"An interracial friendship between two teenaged girls goes tragically wrong in this powerful historical novel set in the Jim Crow South. For Lamb follows a family striving to better their lives in the late 1930s Jackson, Mississippi. Lamb's mother is a hard-working, creative seamstress who cannot reveal she is a lesbian. Lamb's brother has a brilliant mind and has even earned a college scholarship for a black college up north--if only he could curb...

Risking a whipping if they are discovered, Rosa and her mama sneak away from their slave quarters during the night to a hidden location in a field where they learn to read and write in a pit school.