Children's Picture Book Database at Miami University

As a child of the civil rights movement, a little girl recounts the story of her parents growing up with Jim Crow laws which said that black people had to sit in the back of the bus, the last car of the train, and the balcony of the movie theatre. From New York to Georgia, the girl and her family moves back home to find that restaurants would not let them come in to eat. Families gather at friends houses to eat while organizing a peaceful protest to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. The people start at Brown Chapel AME Church with thousands of others - which included Jewish rabbis, Catholic priests, and Baptist ministers. It took four days to march the fifty miles as people watched them on TV. On the sixth of August, President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into the history books. The children march on to other causes.

African American history makers march across the pages as fighters, inventors, sprinters, singers, judges, and presidents. Each famous person is described by first name with their accomplishments in action. Each pioneer contributes to the higher movement of shaping the next generation of change.

Audrey is a very confident and brave nine-year-old girl who knows all about segregation. She sees how others treat black people, and she wants to speak up and go to places like anybody else. After a church service, Audrey volunteers to go to jail to make a statement about freedom. Jail was quite hard, and the food was awful. After five days, Audrey is released to go home. Two months later, the City of Birmingham Alabama wipes segregation laws off the books. From then on, Audrey Faye Hendricks is known as the "Civil Rights Queen" and the youngest known marcher in the Children's March in May 1963. Audrey can now enjoy her ice cream at the parlor counter like everybody else.

The music and song lyrics of this children's march is a nursery rhyme from England where the Grand Old Duke of York once sent his solders off to battle. Sing along as you learn how ten thousand men marched up to the top of the hill and marched down the hill again.

A young high school girl goes with her father to a march on the United States capitol during a civil rights gathering. She is surrounded by "one million men" and she experiences pride as she and her father witness history in Washington, D.C.