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Wooten and Claybough, through interviews with the author, Ann Bausum, and Jennifer Emmett, the Editorial Director for Children's Books at the National Geographic Society, discuss the writing and development of the powerful civil rights text, Freedom Riders: John Lewis and Jim Zwerg on the Front Lines of the Civil Rights Movement.
"HUMAN EXISTENCE IS, IN FACT, a radical and profound tension between good and evil, between dignity and indignity, between decency and indecency, between the beauty and the ugliness of the world." (Paulo Freiré, 2000, p. 53)
The year 1960 saw the dawning of a new era in America. Civil rights activists challenged Jim Crow segregation in the United States by claiming occupation and ownership of public spaces. Activists challenged America to awaken from its complacent slumber and address domestic issues by pressuring the federal government to enforce the principles and beliefs of a democracy. In 1961, "Freedom Riders" boarded buses headed south to confront the demons of prejudice and hate. Upon arrival they met fierce resistance and extreme violence. Television and photography helped to bring the civil rights movement, including the "Freedom Riders," into the homes and hearts of our nation.
Ann Bausum's Freedom Riders: John Lewis and Jim Zwerg on the Front Lines of the Civil Rights Movement (2006), a Sibert Honor Book, traces the lives of two "Freedom Riders." John Lewis and Jim Zwerg, though from very different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds, bonded as "blood brothers" and leaders in the Freedom Riders movement. The first pages introduce stark contrasts between their upbringings: Lewis was raised in poverty in the "black belt" of Alabama farmland, and Zwerg grew up in a White middle class family in northern Wisconsin. Each of the fifty images illuminates the emotional content and context of the time, threading together a compelling and startling visual reality. Beginning with a silhouette of Lewis as a schoolboy, his eyes filled with undetermined hope, Bausum's visual timeline gives birth to the book's final image: a two-page spread of the 1963 March on Washington. Lewis was only 23 years old.
Ann Bausum is an award-winning author who has published more than eight books with National Geographic Society. Passionate about the pursuit of social justice, Bausum channels much of her energy into researching...