Racial Relations

The issue at the center of this book is that of race relations and racism in the American south in the mid-twentieth century and the civil rights movement that fought racial discrimination. The book tells the story of one young girl’s participation in the Selma-Montgomery marches of 1965 but is also about the greater movement that she participated in and the historic effect that this march had on American history and what it means for the present.

Lynda describes her childhood to set the scene of racial segregation in the 1950s and early 1960s for her reader. She writes that “in those days, you were born black or you were born white in Selma—and there was a big difference” (13). She great up in a black neighborhood, attended a black school and church, and her community supported one another and rallied to the cause of the vote...