Teaching of School Integration with Books

The book Remember by Toni Morrison could serve as an excellent companion piece to The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963. 

This is a non-fiction book that explores segregation and the ultimate integration of the school system in the South.  Throughout the entire book, the author imagines the thoughts and words of the people within the photographs depicting the struggles of black children.

These pictures were beautifully put together to tell the story of school integration.

Seeing these pictures was so very powerful.  Though these pictures did not show the violence that is often associated with the Civil Rights movement, they did show the innocent expressions of the children but the hate on some of the adults' faces; because of this, this book is very appropriate for upper elementary students or higher who have studied the period and understand it.

At the very end, I teared up as I looked at the faces from the Church bombing in 1963 that Christopher Paul Curtis references in his own book.  Those were the children who died because someone hated them for their skin color....Seeing that, the entire book became even more powerful for me.

I did often feel a little lost with the accompanying texts of the author's emotions explaining what the people were thinking without explaining what the image was.

However, at the end there is a note and description about each photo; I think this book would have been even better if these accompanying notes had been captions to the actual photos as opposed to saving them for the end.  I would recommend this book for at least an upper elementary child.