Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and the American Book Award, the bestselling Common Ground is much more than the story of the busing crisis in Boston as told through the experiences of three families.

Ruby Bridges recounts the story of her involvement, as a six-year-old, in the integration of her school in New Orleans in 1960.

When bright six year old Ruby is chosen to be the first African-American to integrate her local New Orleans elementary school, she is subjected to the true ugliness of racism for the very first time.

"In 1956, one year before federal troops escorted the Little Rock 9 into Central High School, fourteen year old Jo Ann Allen was one of twelve African-American students who broke the color barrier and integrated Clinton High School in Tennessee. At first things went smoothly for the Clinton 12, but then outside agitators interfered, pitting the townspeople against one another. Uneasiness turned into anger, and even the Clinton Twelve themselves wondered...

Racial tension runs high in 1971 Durham, North Carolina as residents continue to fight the 1954 Supreme Court decision to desegregate their schools. A series of town meetings are called to discuss the matter. Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis, the meeting co-chairs, have very different views. Passionately advocating for school integration is a way of life for Atwater, a champion for Civil Rights. C.P. Ellis, Exalted Cyclops leading the Durham chapter of...

In 1958 Little Rock, Arkansas, painfully shy twelve-year-old Marlee sees her city and family divided over school integration, but her friendship with Liz, a new student, helps her find her voice and fight against racism.

The “compelling and lively” story of a pioneering abolitionist schoolteacher and her far-reaching influence on civil rights and American law (Richard S. Newman, author of Freedom’s Prophet).
 
When Prudence Crandall, a Canterbury, Connecticut schoolteacher, accepted a black woman as a student, she unleashed a storm of controversy that catapulted her to national notoriety, and drew the attention

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"It's 1963, and things are changing for Jezebel Turner. Her beloved grandmother has just passed away. The local police deputy won't stop harassing her family. With school integration arriving in South Carolina, Jez and her twin brother, Jay, are about to begin the school year with a bunch of new kids. But the biggest change comes when Jez and Jay turn eleven and their uncle, Doc, tells them he's going to train them in rootwork. Jez and Jay have always...

"The names Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan Massery may not be well known, but the image of them from September 1957 surely is: a black high school girl, dressed in white, walking stoically in front of Little Rock Central High School, and a white girl standing directly behind her, face twisted in hate, screaming racial epithets. This famous photograph captures the full anguish of desegregation -- in Little Rock and throughout the South -- and an...