Freedom Summer
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Average rating5
Two boys—one black, one white—are best friends in the segregated 1960s South in this picture book about friends sticking together through thick and thin. John Henry swims better than anyone I know. He crawls like a catfish, blows bubbles like a swamp monster, but he doesn’t swim in the town pool with me. He’s not allowed. Joe and John Henry are a lot alike. They both like shooting marbles, they both want to be firemen, and they both love to swim. But there’s one important way they're different: Joe is white and John Henry is black, and in the South in 1964, that means John Henry isn’t allowed to do everything his best friend is. Then a law is passed that forbids segregation and opens the town pool to everyone. Joe and John Henry are so excited they race each other there...only to discover that it takes more than a new law to change people’s hearts.
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Freedom Summer is the story of the friendship of John Henry and Joe, two boys who both want to grow up to be firemen and who both enjoy swimming. There's something that divides the boys, and that is the ramifications of being of different races during a time in America that creates the ramifications. The boys swim together in the creek because John Henry is barred from swimming in the whites-only pool in town. And then comes a break in the laws that divide the boys, and they hear the pool will now be open to everyone.
It's a powerful story that should not be missed.
