90
2013
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
Learning Civil Rights Era History through Picture Books a review by Gabrielle Brant Freeman Calvin Alexander Ramsey and Bettye Stroud. Belle, the Last Mule at Gee’s Bend. Illustrated by John Holyfield. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press, 2011. Calvin Alexander Ramsey. Ruth and the Green Book. Illustrated by Floyd Cooper. Minneapolis, MN : Carolrhoda Books, 2010.
Gabrielle Brant Freeman has an MA from ECU and has just completed the requirements for an MFA from Converse College in Spartanburg, SC. She teaches in the English Department at ECU and serves as NCLR’s Submissions Manager. In addition to his two children’s books, Calvin Alexander Ramsey is a playwright. His two-act play The Green Book is based on The Negro Motorist Green Book, which also inspired one of the children’s books reviewed here. He grew up in Roxboro, NC, and serves on the board of the Paul Green Foundation. He lives in Atlanta but will be in Greenville, NC, for the 2013 Eastern North Carolina Literary Homecoming, hosted by NCLR and ECU’s J.Y. Joyner Library. Co-author Bettye Stroud is the author of several other children’s books. She lives in Atlanta where she worked as a library media specialist for elementary schools.
Since my children were born, they have been fascinated by books. I have pictures of each of them, just barely sitting up, surrounded by board books, plush books, and picture books. When I received Belle, the Last Mule at Gee’s Bend to read and review for NCLR, I left it on the table, sure my daughter who is seven would have read it at least once before I got home from work. I thought we would be able to discuss it and read it again with her fouryear-old brother. However, when I got home, the book was exactly where I had left it. My mother was reading a book about dinosaurs to the kids on the couch. “Did you read this book yet?” I asked. “Aurora thought it was a special book, something you got from the library, so she wanted to wait for you to get home to read it,” my mom answered. After I settled in with my children on the couch and read Belle to them, we found that it is indeed a special book. Calvin Alexander Ramsey and Bettye Stroud manage to make the concept of racism and the story of Martin Luther King, Jr., accessible to children through the story of Belle, one of the mules that pulled Dr. King’s casket in his funeral procession. In the story, Miz Pettway explains to a young boy named Alex why Belle is allowed to eat the collard greens in her garden. While Alex waits for his mother outside a store, Miz Pettaway tells the story of how Dr. King encouraged the town of Gee’s Bend to vote,
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regardless of the obstacles put in their way. Alex learns that Belle pulled wagons full of people to a nearby town so that they could vote since the shortest route, a ferry across the river, had been closed specifically to discourage the black people of Gee’s Bend from exercising this right. In the end, Alex learns that everyone counts, “and even an old mule can be a hero.” What I realized that day was that my children had not yet learned about Dr. King. More enlightening, I realized they were not yet aware