1 April 2022 WHEN WINTER ROBESON CAME by Brenda Woods, Penguin Random House/Nancy Paulsen Books, January 2022, 176p, ISBN: 978-1-5247-4158-7

“SACRAMENTO– Gov.elect Ronald Reagan will ask the legislature early next year to repeal the Rumford Open Housing Act because it interferes with the rights of individuals to dispose of their property as they see fit. In a series of campaign speeches, Reagan deplored racial bigotry but said prejudice could not be prevented by law. He said all persons in a free society have a ‘basic and cherished right’ to do as they please with their property. If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house, he has a right to do so, Reagan said, even though such a prejudice is morally wrong. Reagan denounced the Rumford Act which outlaws racial discrimination in the sale and rental of real estate as an attempt ‘to give one segment of our population rights at the expense of the basic rights of all our citizens.’”

– Madera Tribune, November 21, 1966

“Shotgun

Shoot him ‘fore he run now

Do the jerk baby

Do the jerk now”

– Junior Walker (1965)

Brenda Woods’s WHEN WINTER ROBESON CAME is an engaging piece of historical fiction written in prose poetry. Set in Los Angeles, before and during the summer of 1965 Watts Rebellion, it’s a relatively quick read about Eden Coal’s 13 year-old cousin, Winter Robeson, coming to visit, and the two cousins seeking to track down Winter’s father, who disappeared in LA a decade earlier.

The majority of books for young readers that deal with civil rights and the 1960s are set in the South, where racism was up front, and often deadly. WHEN WINTER ROBESON CAME examines the more subtle racism that existed outside the South. Events and dialogue in the story match what I observed as a kid on suburban Long Island where the history of redlining meant that the Black population was shoehorned into a few scattered towns, and a Black family that sought to move into a white neighborhood was subject to violent rejection. (I’ve detailed elsewhere the community agitation against integration, and even firebombings, in my suburban childhood town.)

“Steps in Different Directions

Daddy pokes his head outside. Eden and Winter, y’all hurry,

Lyndon Johnson’s ‘bout to sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965!

Together, in front of the television, we huddle.

The president puts pen to paper and signs.

This is monumental, Mama declares, a step in the right direction.

Daddy cheers and proclaims, Thought our hope had died with JFK,

but LBJ might just do us right.

Immediately, Winter disagrees. Some folks in Mississippi might still be too scared to vote, like my mama. You know, after the Freedom Summer murders and the bombing of that Freedom School and then those houses in Indianola just this past May…

Daddy hangs his head. We knew some of those folks who had their houses bombed. It’s why we left. Too many folks wanting to kill us when we try to claim our rights.

Winter says, I’ve been begging Mama to leave, move here to California, where it’s nice.

Daddy, as always in the mood for truth, tells him,

It may look nice, son, but even here it doesn’t take long to learn we’re not always welcome. There may not be signs posted, but segregation’s alive here too.

Plenty of places we can’t rent or buy.

The Fair Housing Act was supposed to change all that.

But, of course, it was repealed.

One step forward, another step back.”

Wait. This confused the heck out of me. The Fair Housing Act wasn’t enacted until 1968, right?

What I didn’t understand, before doing a bit of research, is that the California legislature and then-Governor Pat Brown had enacted a STATE fair housing law that took effect in 1963. It was repealed in 1964 through California’s initiative, or proposition, process. Proposition 14 made it onto the ballot, and nearly every county in the state voted to eliminate the fair housing law. The proposition was overturned by the California Supreme Court as unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Governor Pat Brown’s support for fair housing likely cost him the 1966 gubernatorial election and this issue was later behind Reagan’s “states’ rights” rhetoric as a presidential candidate.

There are some weighty history lessons tucked below the surface in this tale of two kids on a family mission who suddenly face grave danger when Black dissatisfaction with a plethora of inequalities hits a boiling point. Such lessons will enlighten middle graders and tweens who might mistakenly believe that racial animus in modern times has been limited to the former slave and border states.

(For another look at the 1965 Watts Rebellion, see the 1995 Caldecott Medal-winning SMOKY NIGHT by Eve Bunting and David Diaz.)

Richie Partington, MLIS

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