14 January 2015 SEEDS OF FREEDOM: THE PEACEFUL INTEGRATION OF HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA by Hester Bass and E.B. Lewis, ill., Candlewick, January 2015, 32p., ISBN: 978-0-7636-6919-5

“That’s just the way it is

Some things’ll never change.

That’s just the way it is

Ha, but don’t you believe them.”

-- Bruce Hornsby “The Way It Is”

“Life is good in the mountains of north Alabama. Huntsville is the ‘Space Center of the Universe.’ German scientists, enemies of the United States just twenty years before, are working peacefully beside American engineers. Rockets that will take astronauts to the moon are sprouting beside the cotton fields. But these aren’t good times for everyone.”

SEEDS OF FREEDOM tells the little-known Civil Rights-era story of how Huntsville, Alabama sort of overcame segregation in the early sixties in a sort of civilized manner. This civic evolution moved forward despite Alabama governor George Wallace’s racist demagoguery, which was infecting a new generation and inspiring horrific and oft-deadly acts of terrorism against blacks all over the South.

I may sound sort of ambivalent about SEEDS OF CHANGE. But that’s not the case. This nonfiction storytelling is filled with nuances and contradictions that make it well worth reading, sharing, and discussing with middle grade and middle school students.

Why did Huntsville sort of move forward with integration in a manner that was sort of different from the rest of the south? It all had to do with money.

The federal government’s Redstone Arsenal, next to Huntsville, was previously a WWII chemical weapons manufacturing facility. By the sixties it had become the geographic center of NASA. NASA was then working to fulfill JFK’s dream of putting a man on the moon. Huntsville was in relatively good fiscal shape because of the federal funding coming to NASA.

Some in power in Huntsville feared federal funds might be at risk if the city exploded in racial strife. In addition, the black community had staged a successful economic boycott that cost the white merchants a whole lot of money.

So the almighty dollar trumped racism and an uneasy truce was struck to avoid racial explosions. Meanwhile, a lawsuit by several black families seeking to integrate the city’s schools led to a federal desegregation order. Integration in Huntsville was not a clean and tidy process, but it sort of worked.

E.B. Lewis’s illustrations are uniformly powerful. There is so much emotion in his depiction of a girl at the shoe store holding a tracing of her feet because blacks were not permitted to try on shoes before buying them, in the determination of black students sitting in at a lunch counter, and in other illustrations.

A three-page author’s note follows the story. In part, it serves as a reality check. The author explains that the Huntsville schools still operate today under that federal desegregation order and writes, “These schools are officially integrated, but often neighborhoods retain traditional racial boundaries, meaning that some schools still serve mostly white children and others mostly black children.” The author then concludes with a note of hope, saying that sometimes it just takes one person to start something good and that one person could be you.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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