Lillian’s Right to Vote: A Celebration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Jonah Winter)

Title:  Lillian’s Right to Vote:  A Celebration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965

Author:  Jonah Winter

Illustrator:  Shane W. Evans

Target Ages:  5 and up

Genre:  Narrative Non-Fiction Picture Book

Publisher Summary: 

Celebrate the momentous law enacted fifty years ago—the voting rights act of 1965—with this powerful and moving picture book.

What if you had to pass a test or answer impossible questions like “how many bubbles are in a bar of soap?” before you were allowed to vote?

Or imagine being forced to pay a special tax before you could cast your ballot.

And how would it feel to be chased by an angry mob—by people in your own town—just for trying to vote?

This is the story of Lillian’s family—and so many other African Americans—who, after generations of discrimination, triumphed over injustice thanks to a law that protected every American’s right to vote.

First Lines:

A very old woman stands at the bottom of a very steep hill.  It’s Voting Day.  She’s an American, and by God, she is going to vote.  Lillian is her name. 

It’s a long haul up that steep hill.  It’s a long haul when you’ve been alive for a hundred years. It’s a long haul when you’ve lived the life that Lillian has—and walked so far in her shoes.  When Lillian looks up, it’s more than blue sky she sees.  She sees history. 

Historical References and Story Overview

As Lillian walks up a steep hill to vote, she recalls the struggle her family went through before African-Americans finally had the right and freedom to vote.  Though the story is specific to her personal and familial experience, it parallels the trials millions endured.

It begins with her great great grandparents standing on the slave block being sold in front of the courthouse she is walking toward.  Next, her great-grandpa Edmund is a slave picking cotton from dawn to dusk.  He does not have the right to vote or to do much of anything else until after the Civil War and the 15^th Amendment is passed—giving all male citizens the right to vote regardless of race or previous condition of servitude.  With pride, Edmond votes in his first election.

Just 20 years later, her grandpa Isaac is prevented from voting due to a poll tax.  Lillian, also, recalls her uncle Levi who is forced to take a “test” with ridiculous questions like how many bubbles are in a bar of soap or what are the names of all 67 state judges.  He is turned away because he fails to answer such questions. 

She sees a brave young woman with her family trying to register after the 19^th Amendment is passed.  They are chased away by an angry crowd. Another time, she is turned away because she cannot write down on a blank sheet of paper a section of the Constitution.  The woman in this memory is Lillian, herself. 

A funeral procession is shown for a man who dies in a peaceful protest as he seeks justice—and the right to vote.  Then, she remembers the civil rights protesters led by Martin Luther King, Jr. as they march and pray and dream of justice.

Finally, Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  His famous words are memorialized, “Every American citizen must have equal right to vote…there is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right.”

Evaluation:

I could not wait to register to vote! As soon as I turned eighteen, I did. I was away at college when the next presidential election came around, but I voted via absentee ballot. I don’t recall my family talking much about politics or voting.  Nevertheless, I knew it was vital to register, to stay informed, and to vote.

However, only between 50-60% of the eligible voters exercise this vital civic duty and inalienable right—a right that millions fought and died for.  During her walk Lillian sees a young man and asks if he is going to vote.  He says, “Yes, ma’am.”  She tells him, “You better.”  Throughout the story, Lillian exemplifies a strong sense of dignity and pride at being able to vote, which will resonate with people of all ages as they learn the immense hardships she endured for that freedom.

Framing the story around both Lillian’s present day voting act and her journey up a hill is an effective technique.  Despite her advanced age and the physical hardship of the climb, she does not quit—even when the hill gets steeper.  At one point, she looks up to the top of the hill and wonders if she will make it.  As she becomes weary from the climb, she keeps going “footstep by footstep.” Lillian epitomizes perseverance and strength to not allow challenges to deter her. 

Furthermore, I love the metaphor of the climb.  On a literal level she is climbing to the top of the hill to vote. On a metaphorical one, it demonstrates how African Americans like her have had an uphill battle to secure this fundamental right.

One of the most powerful contrasts is between the singing birds and smiling people of the present and the burning cross and angry mobs of the past.  In another instance, the metaphors of light (sun) and darkness are used.  These and other images help build an emotional appeal for participating in this vital community act. 

The illustrations focus on Lillian and her visions of the past, depicted as ghost-like figures—struggling and fighting for justice.  She realizes that because of all the sacrifice of the men and women before her, it is her duty to vote and to let her voice be heard. She thinks to herself, As long as I still have a pulse, I am going to vote.

I highly recommend Lillian’s Right to Vote: A Celebration of the Voting Rights At of 1965.  This powerful and poignant story provides vital context and history in the struggle for the right to vote.

A VERY Biased Author's Note

Unfortunately, the author adds historically biased and untrue information as a resource for educators and parents in the author’s note.  He moves from historical remembrance to propaganda device.

First, Winter states that white voters in the south left the Democratic Party for the Republican Party due to racism.  This Southern Strategy myth is just that, a myth.  By including it in his book, he is not so subtly stating:  Republicans are racist.  Watch HERE for a short video about on this myth (includes a link under the video of facts and sources).  

Second, the author mixes facts with politics when discussing voter suppression.  No one denies that the awful literacy tests and unfair poll taxes that some politicians in southern Democratic strongholds used for the purpose of denying the vote to African-Americans were unjust. However, Winter uses the issue as a springboard to undermine the voter ID issue. He states that voter ID laws are meant to “deny many Americans a basic right—a right for which so many courageous people fought and died.”  This emotionally manipulative argument equates the aforementioned tests and taxes with the voter ID requirements conservatives advocate for today. The evidence used is the difficulty that “the poor and the elderly” suffer to get an ID.  He encourages “a new generation” to “rise and continue” the fight against this unfair practice. 

Once again Winter depicts Republicans as racist, in this case, for wanting a voter ID law. The only reason anyone wants this law is to prevent voter fraud.  Everything from flying on a plane to cashing a check requires an ID.  No one claims the airline or the bank is attempting suppression by requiring an ID. In addition, I do not know anyone—Republican or Democrat—who would not help a poor or elderly person get a needed ID.  Nor are there any groups or government entities standing in the way of the poor and elderly getting an ID. In conclusion, the voter ID movement of today has no connection to the Jim Crow Laws of the past.

What is more unfair—people voting illegally or everyone being provided with an ID and an opportunity to vote once? 

Both parties want fair elections. Both parties want equality and justice. Painting one party as racist monsters standing in the way of those things undermines an otherwise worthwhile picture book. 

Five Fabulous Picture Books about Trailblazing Women

Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music

Margarita Engle, author

Rafael Lopez, illustrator

Publisher Summary:

Girls cannot be drummers.  Long ago on an island filled with music and rhythm, no one questioned that rule—until the drum dream girl.  She longed to play tall congas and small bongos and silvery, moon-bright timbales.  She had to keep her dream quiet.  She had to practice in secret.  But when at last her music was heard, everyone sang and danced and decided that boys and girls should be free to drum and dream.

Inspired by a Chinese-African-Cuban girl who broke Cuba’s traditional taboo against female drummers, Drum Dream Girls tells an inspiring true story for dreamers everywhere. 

Why It’s Fabulous:

This Pura Belpre winner’s stunning illustrations are full of bright colors and vivid imagination: A blend of the real and the fantastic as well as of nature and of culture. The lyrical free verse is intoxicating.  Drum Dream Girl works both independently and with a teacher until she has mastered the art.  Her determination and skill wins her father over. As a result, she finally plays for an audience,  prompting a change in the cultural tradition.  Now, both men and women are allowed to play the drums.

Mermaid Queen:  The Spectacular True Story of Annette Kellerman, Who Swam Her Way to Fame, Fortune, and Swimsuit History

Shana Corey, author

Edwin Fotheringham, illustrator

Publisher Summary:

Are you brave enough to make a wave?

If you love sports and people who aren’t afraid to swim against the tide, Annette Kellerman and her freestyle approach to life will make you heart swell.

This book is a winning portrait of a little-known athlete, performer, and fashion revolutionary who broke records (and rules) and dazzled the world with her splashy pluck and courage.

Why She’s Fabulous:

Annette begins life with physical limitations.  To build up her strength, she swims. The water is the one place she feels graceful and strong.  At a time when female athletes were not common, she begins winning swimming races and develops a new sport—water ballet.  Not only does she break down barriers in sports, but she does in swimwear as well.  The women who did swim were covered from neck to ankles—some even wore corsets!  Annette’s bathing suit is so scandalous at the time, she is arrested!  She argues before a judge and wins!  Women begin swimming more for exercise and fun.  Even more importantly, they are able to do it more comfortably because now they wear suits like Annette’s.  As a trailblazer for women in sports and in fashion, Annette makes a lasting impact.

Miss Mary Reporting:  The True Story of Sportswriter Mary Garber

Sue Macy, author

C. F. Payne, illustrator

Publisher Summary:

Press Box:  Women and Children Not Admitted

So read the press pass that Mary Garber had to wear as a reporter at sporting events.  It was embarrassing, even insulting, but in the 1940s, sports—and sports reporting—was a man’s world.

Mary didn’t let that stop her.  She never let anything stop her, really. As a kid, she played quarterback for her local football team.  Later, as a reporter, she dug in her heels and built up her own sports beat.  For close to fifty years, Mary shined the spotlight on local heroes whose efforts might otherwise have gone unnoticed.  “That’s Miss Mary Garber,” one boy said at a soapbox derby.  “And she doesn’t care who you are, or where you’re from, or what you are.  If you do something, she’s going to write about you.”

This is the story of a woman who pursued her dream and changed the world.

Why She’s Fabulous:

Mary combines the two things she loves—writing and sports—and makes a career out of it when few women had professional careers outside a nurse or a teacher. She also has a keen eye and optimistic perspective. Using all these passions and talents, Mary covers beats that include athletes in their novice days and in their professional careers:  Big sports competitions, like Major League Baseball games, and small town ones, like soapbox derbies.  She writes about men and women as well as Blacks and Whites. Many athletes are positively impacted by her work, and she blazes a trail that eventually allows women more opportunities in sports reporting. 

Danza!  Amalia Hernandez and elBallet Forklorico de Mexico

Duncan Tonatiuh, author and illustrator

Publisher Summary:

As a child Amalia Hernandez saw a pair of dancers in the town square.  The way they stomped and swayed to the rhythm of the music inspired her. She knew one day she would become a dancer.

Amalia studied ballet and modern dance under the direction of skilled teachers who had performed in world-renowned dance companies. But she never forgot the folk dance she had seen years earlier.  She began traveling through the Mexican countryside, witnessing the dances of many regions, and she used her knowledge of ballet and modern dance to adapt the traditional dances to the stage.  She founded her own dance company, a group that became known as El Ballet Folklorico de Mexico.

Why She’s Fabulous:

Not only does Amalia become a successful dancer through years of practice and rehearsals, but she also creates new ones merging various styles.  Traveling all over Mexico, she studies traditional dances and cultural traditions (like dress and music).  Inspired by all of her training and traveling, Amalia produces original dances that celebrate her culture and country’s history.  She takes on many roles—choreographer, company founder, teacher, and director.  Amelia’s innovative vision resonates long after her passing.  Her dance company continues to perform all over the world, celebrating both the artistry of dance as well as the culture of the Mexican people.

Pocket Full of Colors:  The Magical World of Mary Blair, Disney Artist Extraordinaire

Amy Guglielmo and Jacqueline Tourville, authors

Brigette Barrager, illustrator

Publisher Summary:

Mary Blair lived her life in color: vivid, wild color.

For her imaginative childhood to her career as an illustrator, designer, and animator for Walt Disney Studios, Mary wouldn’t play by the rules.  At a time when studios wanted to hire men and think in black and white, Mary painted twinkling emerald skies, peach giraffes with tangerine spots, and magenta horses that could fly.  She painted her world.

Why She’s Fabulous:
Mary collects colors everywhere she goes and saves them in her imagination. When she is hired at Disney Studios, she thinks she will finally have the opportunity to share her artistic flair.  Unfortunately, her colors and creatively are met with resistance in a then male-dominated field.  Walt Disney appreciates her vision though.  He commissions her for a special project that utilizes her talents.  Mary creates a “world of laughter, a world of smiles. And color, color, color, everywhere.”  She is a woman who refuses “to color in the lines.” As a result, she makes her mark on the culture. 

Tubman and Truth: American Heroes

Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad in the Sky

Faith Ringgold, author and illustrator

Publisher Summary:

Flying way up, so far up that the mountains look like rock candy and the oceans like tiny cups of tea, Cassie and her brother, Be Be, encounter a fantastic train—the Underground Railroad train—and a tiny woman in a conductor’s uniform.  The woman is Harriet Tubman, who transports Cassie and Be Be back to the terrifying world of the slave plantation and on a desperate—but ultimately triumphant—journey of escape.  Drawing on historical accounts…and her own imagination, Faith Ringgold has created a book that both recounts the realities of slavery and joyfully celebrates freedom. 

What’s to Love:

This imaginative encounter puts modern day children in the role of escaped slaves—hiding is often frightening places like cobwebbed attics and even a confining coffin.  The constant threat of being caught and punished echoes in the story elements as well as the nefarious faces lurking in the shadows of the illustrations. The flying metaphor for modern day African Americans is used to illustrate how far they have come in their fight for freedom.  Unlike their ancestors who were in shackles, they can go anywhere and be anything.  The story ends with Cassie and Be Be reunited as people past and present remember the bravery and sacrifice of Harriet Tubman.

Before She Was Harriet

Lesa Cline-Ransome, author

James E. Ransome, illustrator

Publisher Summary:  

Moses. General Tubman, Minty, Araminta—the woman we know today as Harriet Tubman went by many names.  Each represented one of her many roles as a spy, as a liberator, as a suffragist, and more.

What’s to Love:

Using gorgeous watercolor paintings and lyrical free verse, the story of Harriet Tubman is revealed as a non-linear retrospective.  Each two-page spread depicts one of her amazing accomplishments—starting  with her role as a suffragist fighting for women without a voice and looking all the way back to when she was a slave named Araminta who was taught by her father to read the woods and stars.  To conclude, the story shifts back to Tubman as an old woman, “tired and worn and wrinkled and free.”  For those who only know her by her more famous role, conductor of the Underground Railroad, this book paints a fuller view of the woman who fought so hard to create a more just and free world. 

Moses:  When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom

Carole Boston Weatherford, author

Kadir Nelson, illustrator

Publisher Summary:

I set the north star in the heavens

And I mean for you to be free…

Born into slavery, Harriet Tubman hears these words from God one summer night and decides to leave her husband and family behind and escape.  Taking with her only her faith, she must creep through woods with hounds at her feet, sleep for days in a potato hole, trust people who could have easily turned her in.

But she was never alone.

What’s to Love:

Readers walk along as Harriet experiences the peril and hardship of her escape. They learn about how her faith gives her strength through her doubts and fears.  Her faith, also, gives her courage to help others to freedom.  To be a beacon of hope.  To be the Moses of her people.  The incomparable Kadir Nelson illustrates another stunning picture book about courage, perseverance, and hope in a time of rampant injustice and inequality. 

Only Passing Through:  The Story of Sojourner Truth

Anne Rockwell, author

R. Gregory Christie, illustrator

Publisher Summary:

Isabella was only nine when she was sold for the first time.  And at first no one wanted her.  The slave auctioneer had to throw in a flock of sheep before someone bid on the skinny young girl.

But this young girl would grow.  She would grow to become a brave, strong, towering women who would speak out against the evils of slavery.  She would transform herself into one of the most powerful voices in the abolitionist movement and would help to change the course of a nation. 

The slave girl Isabella would become the legendary Sojourner Truth. 

What’s to Love:

This fascinating picture book biography focuses primarily on Sojourner’s early personal life as a slave, mother, and freed woman.  Her bravery and boldness are highlighted, such as when she went before a White court and argued for her son’s freedom (and won).  Readers learn about her name, which she changed to represent her new life as well as her faith, her purpose, and her message.  The pivotal moment though is when she speaks before a large group of White people, and some men get rowdy.  Fearful, yet bold, Sojourner begins to sing, causing the crowd to calm.  She goes on to give her speech that night and for many nights afterward—throughout the land.  Her courage, boldness, and message are an inspiration. 

My Name is Truth

Ann Turner, author

James Ransome, illustrator

Publisher Summary:

God spoke in my heart a new name

which fits me like a new dress made

just for me…

I think with a name like

Sojourner Truth

a body has some respect at last. 

Here is the celebrated story of how former slave Isabella Baumfree transformed herself into the preacher and orator Sojourner Truth, one of the most inspiring and important figures of the abolitionist and women’s rights movement. 

What’s to Love:

Written as a first person narrative from Sojourner’s perspective, readers get snapshots of her life from birth to old age.  Concrete similes bring out her fierce faith and bold personality, such as “God spoke in my heart a new name that fits me like a new dress made just for me” and “at times my voice is like Gabriel’s trumpet.”  Though she constantly travels and tirelessly advocates for freedom and equality, she never forgets her family, who are like shining stars in the sky waiting for her arrive in heaven.  This poignant tribute is an ideal introduction to her legacy and message as a civil rights leader.

Sojourner Truth’s Step-Stomp Stride

Andrea Davis Pinkney, author

Brian Pinkney, illustrator

Publisher Summary:

Sojourner Truth was as strong and tall as most men.  She was big, black, and so beautiful.  Born into slavery, Sojourner ran away as a young girl.  She cherished her freedom, and believed it should be granted to everyone.  But she didn’t fight for it with her mighty fists, and she didn’t stomp for it with her giant boots.  Sojourner spoke the truth, and struggled against injustice with her brave, beautiful voice.

What’s to Love:

This book covers much of the same material as the others.  There are a couple differences though.  This narrative emphasizes her big, strong, and beautiful appearance to focus more on her physical strength and presence which goes with the “step-stomp stride” of the title.  In the beginning she is a strong slave woman who can do any physical task a man can do.  This metaphor continues as she walks as a free woman and uses her strong feet and presence to take on jobs in the city.  Eventually, she stomps out ignorance and intolerance as a powerful speaker.  Another major difference in this story is the focus on her work for women’s rights.  This role is epitomized when she listens to a group of preachers declaring all the reasons women should remain in an inferior status.  In response, Sojourner walks up to the podium to refute each one of their arguments using truths from the Bible.  Sojourner is a model for the importance of using your words to fight injustice, no matter how much physical strength a person possesses. 

When Harriet Met Sojourner

Catherine Clinton, author

Shane W. Evan, illustrator

Publisher Summary:

To women with similar backgrounds.

Both slaves; both fiercely independent.

Both great in different ways.

Harriet Tubman:  brave pioneer who led her fellow slaves to freedom, larger than life…yearning to be free.

Sojourner Truth:  strong woman who spoke up for African American rights, tall as a tree…yearning to be free.

One day in 1864, the lives of these two women came together. 

What’s to Love:

Unfolding in gripping parallel portraits, this beautiful tribute celebrates the common work and message of two heroes of the abolitionists’ movement.  Though they were born decades apart and in different parts of the country, their common faith and powerful message made them sisters in the fight against the evils of slavery.

For Older Children…

Harriet Tubman:  The Life of an African-American Abolitionist

Rob Shone & Anita Ganeri, authors

Rob Shone, illustrator

The book begins and ends with a few pages of historical information.  The majority of it is written as a graphic novel beginning with Tubman’s childhood and ending with her death.  Not only are her activities with the Underground Railroad shown but also her work with the Union army and other efforts to help the needy.  In addition, Civil War moments are revealed—specifically ones noteworthy for African-Americans.