Provides firsthand accounts of former slaves who wrote of their experiences during, and shortly after, the war.

"Gracetown, Florida. June 1950. Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie's journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory. Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort...

"Following the Civil War, the Reconstruction era raised a new question to those in power in the US: Should African Americans, so many of them former slaves, be granted the right to vote? In a bitter partisan fight over the legislature and Constitution, the answer eventually became yes, though only after two constitutional amendments, two Reconstruction Acts, two Civil Rights Acts, three Enforcement Acts, the impeachment of a president, and an army...

Clever Brer Rabbit finds a way to teach the greedy Brer Tiger a lesson.

As a slag heap, the result of strip mining, creeps closer to his house in the Ohio hills, fifteen-year-old M.C. is torn between trying to get his family away and fighting for the home they love.

"On a small family farm, an old truck falls into disrepair and lies nearly forgotten, except by the family's daughter. The truck is been part of her daydreams as she grows up and develops strength and independence. As an industrious young woman, she pulls the rusted and overgrown vehicle from its almost-grave and restores it"--

An illustrated collection of poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar, including "A Boy's Summer Song," "The Sparrow," and "Little Brown Baby."