Boycott Blues: How Rosa Parks Inspired a Nation by Andrea Davis Pinkney, Brian Pinkney, Ill.  Greenwillow Books, 2008 ISBN-13: 978-0060821180, Q5/P5.

            This educational picture book tells the story of how Rosa Parks started the boycott of riding busses as long as black people were treated unequally. Thousands joined her in walking, or riding their bikes. Pinkneys ink and water-color Illustrations are unique in showing the constant movement of the people to push forward. This text is a great tool for 5^th and 6^th grade classrooms to open a discussion about “Jim Crow” and what African Americans endured in this country well in to the 20^th century.

Jim Crow

Grade Level: 5-6

Subject Area: History

Duration: 2 class periods

Objectives: Students will learn about the “Jim Crow laws” in the United States.

Books:

Boycott Blues: How Rosa Parks Inspired a Nation by Andrea Davis Pinkney, Brian Pinkney, Ill.  Greenwillow Books, 2008 ISBN-13: 978-0060821180

Richard Wright and the Library Card by William Miller and Gregory Christie, Ill. NY: Lee & Low Books, 1999. ISBN-13: 978-1880000885

Discussion: Open-discussion with the class about how African Americans were treated in the US well into the 20^th century. Explain that the Jim Crow laws were rules that people followed after the slaves were freed and although they were supposed to be “separate but equal” it was not a good situation for African Americans. What ways were they treated unfairly? Prompt them to think of Rosa Parks being asked to move on the buss, and Richard Wright and his struggle to read.

Free write: Talk to the class about a time in their life when they felt they were not being treated fairly. Tell them to write about it in their journal. Where they afraid to speak up? Why? What happened?

-Christina Gendron, 8/2/09

Boycott Blues: How Rosa parks inspired a nation by Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pnkney, ill. New York: Amistad/Greenwillow Books, 2008.

ISBN: 9780060821180

Media: colored inks on clay

Beginning with the Jim Crow laws, this book follows Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.  The struggle of African Americans to obtain equal rights in Montgomery, Alabama is conveyed through poetry and song, culminating with the November 13, 1956 Supreme Court decision to strike down the bus segregation laws of Alabama and Montgomery.

Literary Devices:  rhythm, onomatopoeia and rhyme

Curriculum Connection: A story about how Rosa Parks helped to inspire the Montgomery Bus Boycott which led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. successfully became an exorcise in civil disobedience.  This book will help educators convey the struggle of African Americans to end racial segregation.  This is appropriate for grades 5-12.  History, Social studies

Lesson Plan: (paneled from left to right)

Rating: 5Q/5P

Wess Garcia, July 2009