In 1976 he got his chance, and as he put his ballot in the box, he smiled and said to himself: But the grandson vowed to vote for him one day. The boy’s grandfather died before he ever got a chance to vote.

The grandfather was prevented from voting however when he could not pass a literacy test the white deputy overseeing the voting tore up the grandfather’s ballot and threw it on the ground. One morning Granddaddy got all dressed up and took the boy with him for a special occasion: the grandfather intended to vote for the first time. Thus, “politically sanctioned nullification of voter rights was commonplace in Alabama and many other southern states.” īut this story at least gives you a view of what black citizens endured before the 1965 federal legislation.Ī little boy named Michael, who is narrating, lives and works on a farm with his grandparents. The writing team that gave us the book White Water about segregation in the Jim Crow era in the South returns with a look at voting rights in that era in this book subtitled: “A Journey to the Ballot Box.”Īs the authors contend in an Afterword, voting rights were “the last vestige of resistance” in the struggle for civil rights for African Americans. Pair this powerful title with THE DAY GOGO WENT TO VOTE: SOUTH AFRICA, 1994 by Elinor Batezat, Sisulu (Sharon Wilson, ill) and LILLIAN'S RIGHT TO VOTE by Jonah Winter (Shane W. Here again he rises about his expresssive art to visual narratives that carry readers deep into the hearts of their characters portrayed. Ransome turn any book into a winner, in my opinion, including titles like Freedom's School, Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt, and (my personal favorite) THE WAGON. But books like this one come as close to recreating that era if history as anything I can imagine.

Yes, there are common patterns, but the level of powerlessness and danger that surrounded any raised voice in those times is nearly inconceivable to modern sensibilities. I often wish that virtual experiences could place younger people back into the time and space of the civil rights movement, because the experience was SO different from current protests and movements. This is a fine example of the excellent storytelling shared by both the text and the images.

Granddaddy's Turn by Michael S. Bandy