Author: Elizabeth Partridge
Title: Marching for Freedom: Walks Together, Children, and Don't You Grow Weary
Readability Score: Lexile: 960L, DRA: Not Available, Grade Level Equivalent: 7.5, Guided Reading: Not Available
Genre: Informational
Theme: African American History, Citizenship, Equality, Fairness, Justice, and Civil Rights Movement
Primary and Secondary Characters: Joanne, Lynda, Martin Luther King Jr.
Awards/ Date of Publication: 2009
Publishing Company: Viking
ISBN: 978-0-670-01189-6
Summary: This book is written from the viewpoint of African American children and young living in Selma, Alabama during the 1963- 1965. They recall their experience of their grandparents be unable to vote. Joanne recalls standing in line for several house at the courthouse waiting with her mother to register to vote. When two yellow school buses pulled up, and hauled all of the African American people to jail. This was the first time Joanne was in jail, but it would not be her last. She was going to fight for her freedom. The story sequences the events of the months leading up to the Voting Right Act being passed on August 6, 1965. The illustrations are moving photographs of actual events that occurred in 1965.
Classroom Teaching Ideas:1. Informational Text
2. Civil Rights Movement
3. Equality
4. Freedom -- What does freedom mean?
5. Compare and Contrasting life in 1965 to life in 2012
6. Roll play -- Act out Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech.
7. Feelings -- How African American people felt when they couldn't vote, eat, or use the same restroom as White people.
8. Writing
