A Story for Our Times

FREEDOM SUMMER

Written by Deborah Wiles, Illustrated by Jerome Lagarrigue


Deborah Wiles’ picture book Freedom Summer strongly resonates today. The story takes place in 1964 when the Civil Rights Act was passed. It is set in the South where Wiles grew up.

The book’s cover practically tells the story – a black boy is in the center, a white boy at his side, both sitting on a plank, their eyes downcast.

Before Wiles begins her story, she presents an excellent Note About the Text telling how things were in that place and time. She concludes her Note by saying, “I dreamed about changing things, and yet I wondered what any child – black or white – could do. This story grew out of my feelings surrounding that time. It is fiction but based on real events.”

Freedom Summer is told in the voice of the white boy, whose name we hear only once. We learn it from the storekeeper, who calls him Young Joe. The black boy’s name, however, is heard throughout and makes up the first words of Young Joe’s story:

“John Henry Waddell is my best friend.”

Wiles’ homey, lilting writing emphasizes the boys’ friendship.

“We shoot marbles in the dirt until we’re too hot to be alive.”

Done in by the heat, the boys always run to the creek for a swim.

One night at dinner, (prepared and served by John Henry Waddell’s mother), Young Joe’s father says,

“The town pool opens tomorrow to everybody under the sun, no matter what color.”

“That’s the new law,” Mama tells me….. “It’s the way it’s going to be now – Everybody Together…….”

“……..I got to be excused!” I shout, and I run into the kitchen to tell John Henry.

The reader soon learns that the plank pictured on the cover is the diving board at the town pool. The boys’ faces are downcast because they’re watching workers fill the empty pool with tar.

Past this extreme disappointment, Freedom Summer ends on a high note -something we hope for in our time and after.

(For older readers, Deborah Wiles’ newest work – The Sixties Trilogy – is about life in the turbulent 1960’s United States.)