Whilst it is fair to say that teaching about protest against racism in British schools has often neglected Britain in favour of the USA, it is also the case that experience of children has been neglected in favour of a focus on leaders. In 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges became the first black child to integrate an all-white elementary school in New Orleans. In This Is Your Time (Pushkin Press, 2021) Bridges writes a letter to today’s youth, that is at once beautiful and powerful. The book’s cover is a detail from Norman Rockwell’s iconic painting The Problem We All Live With showing Bridges being escorted by US Marshalls against a backdrop of racist graffiti. Bridges offers a personal account, paying tribute to her father, and Barbara Henry, her white teacher; ‘For the entire year she sat alone with me in that classroom and taught me everything I needed to know’(16). She places her story in a broader political context and makes links with contemporary protest against racism in the USA. The effect is to offer young readers a sense of hope grounded in realism; ‘The first steps toward change are never easy.’


How To Change The World by Rashmi Sirdeshpande, (Puffin 2020) is described as a book about ‘real-life stories of the incredible things humans can do when we work together’. The book offers double-paged accounts of collective endeavours (illustrated in a lively style by Annabelle Tempest), including protest from around the world, including the match-workers strike in Bow, London, a variety of campaigns for votes for women, the Montgomery bus boycott, the start of fairer trade, the end of slavery in the British Empire, the tree planters of Piplantri in India, the fight for marriage equality, and environmental protests.


In his forthcoming book Musical Truth Jeffrey Boakye, (Faber, 2021, illustrated by Ngadi Smart) explores the breadth of experiences in over 50 years of Black British History, through 28 songs – a format Boakye employed to great effect in his study of Grime music, Hold Tight (Influx, 2017). Boakye is careful to not limit Black British history to responses to racism; joy and celebration are core to the book, but Musical Truth explores how the relationship between celebration and protest too. This is perhaps most obvious in the work of journalist and activist Claudia Jones who played a key role in establishing the Notting Hill Carnival.


Elsewhere, the Black British Panthers, the Bristol Bus Boycott, responses to Operation Swamp 81, the racist murder of Steven Lawrence, UK Black Pride, the 2010 student protests, the toppling of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol are all discussed. At a time when antiracists are under attack from some quarters of the political establishment and accused of indoctrinating children, Boakye offers


young readers (Key Stage 2 and upwards) an introduction to a history to which they are often not granted access, commenting at one point that, ‘[t]here are no easy answers here but we need to keep asking the difficult questions’ (83).


Books mentioned Being Black, Roxy Harris, O/P East End at Your Feet, Farrukh Dhondy, O/P Come to Mecca and Other Stories, Farrukh Dhondy, O/P The Siege of Babylon, Farrukh Dhondy, O/P This is Your Time, Ruby Bridges, Pushkin Press, 978-1911590590, £8.99 pbk Musical Truth, Jeffrey Boakye, illus Ngadi Smart, Faber, 978-0571366484, £12.99 hbk


How to Change the World, Rashmi Sirdeshpande, illus Annabel Tempest, Puffin, 978-0241410349, £6.99 pbk Black History series, Dan Lyndon, Franklin Watts, £8.99 pbk


Karen Sands-O’Connor is the British Academy Global Professor for Children’s Literature at Newcastle University. Her books include Children’s Publishing and Black Britain 1965-2015 (Palgrave Macmillan 2017).


Darren Chetty is a teacher, doctoral researcher and writer with research interests in education, philosophy, racism, children’s literature and hip hop culture. He is a contributor to The Good Immigrant, edited by Nikesh Shukla and the author, with Jeffrey Boakye, of What Is Masculinity? Why Does It Matter? And Other Big Questions. He tweets at @rapclassroom.


Books for Keeps No.248 May 2021 15


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