Notes

Table of contents: Fear makes me hide -- Growing up rich in spirit -- School days -- Life in the Jim Crow South -- Beating the system -- Lessons from Ned -- The sky did not fall -- Separate but never equal -- Our Manhattan Project -- There's a riot at the school -- Taking care of business -- Don't give up -- Uncharted waters -- A skittish night -- Cover me -- Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County -- Massive resistance -- Standing on shoulders
“When John Stokes was growing up near Farmville, Virginia, Jim Crow laws kept whites and coloreds (as African Americans were called then) apart... whites and coloreds went to separate schools. The law said these schools were ‘separate but equal’. John Stokes and other African-American students knew better. In this moving memoir, John A. Stokes recounts his experiences growing up in the oppressive conditions of the Jim Crow South. And for the first time ever, he reveals the workings of the student committee that planned and executed a strike for better conditions at Robert Russa Moton High School, a strike that made Stokes a plaintiff in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education and helped change life in the United States of America forever”--Jacket flap