Remember: The Journey to School Integration
a fictional account of the dialogue and emotions of the children who lived during the era of “separate but equal” schooling. Remember is a unique pictorial and narrative journey that introduces children to a watershed period in American history and its relevance to us today. [1]
Controversy
Morrison is careful to provide younger readers background on what happened during the Civil Rights struggle. Each of the three sections begins with information providing context for the pictures. The first section—“The Narrow Gate”– opens with a picture of black children in a segregated school and one little girl standing and reading out loud. The text next to the photo reads “The law says I can’t go to school with white children. Are they afraid of my socks, my braids? I am seven years old. Why are they afraid of me?” Most of the other images in this section show assorted segregated classrooms. It concludes with a photo of two girls walking along a railroad track to school in Topeka, Kansas. This picture is followed by the book’s second section, called “The Open Gate,” which deals directly with attempts at integration. There is first a picture of the New York Times’ front page announcing the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. On the facing page is a photo of the Supreme Court. There follows what I find to be one of the most intriguing combinations of image and text in the book. The photo here is also on the book’s cover. As could be expected in a book on the civil rights struggle, a number of the pictures are disturbing. A little white boy in a Klan outfit leaning out a car window. Three white men chasing a black man down a street. White crowds haranguing black students. Two students fighting on a sidewalk.A white restaurant owner, his cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, throwing water on protesters.
The book’s third section, “The Open Gate,” also features photos of acts of protest and white counterprotest that were part of the Civil Rights movement, but an increasingly hopeful note emerges as we move towards the book’s conclusion. This is the section that includes photos of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. [2]