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Contact: Carole Weatherford, 336.887.4505, weathfd@aol.comFreedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-Ins By Carole Boston WeatherfordJerome Lagarrigue, Illustrator32 pp., Dial Books for Young Readers, ISBN 0803728603

Online images:Book cover art (click cover for larger image):www.penguinputnam.com/nf/ Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_0803728603,00.htmlAuthor headshot: http://www.wincbooks.com/cbweatherford.htm

Student Sit-Ins Focus of New Children's Book

More than four decades ago, student sit-ins in cities such as Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Raleigh, and Charlotte, challenged Jim Crow laws and changed the social landscape of the South. Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-Ins (Dial Books, January 2005), a new children's book by Fayetteville State University professor Carole Boston Weatherford, introduces young readers to a seminal event in the Civil Rights Movement. This picture book--illustrated by Coretta Scott King New Talent Award winner Jerome Lagarrigue--shows how one family confronts segregation and supports the student protesters.

The story's main character Connie yearns to have a banana split at Woolworth's whites-only lunch counter. She is encouraged when four students stage sit-ins to desegregate the lunch counter. Then, Connie's older siblings--students at Bennett College and A&T College--join the sit-ins. Her sister is arrested and jailed, driving home the price of freedom. Connie waits and watches as history unfolds.

This fictional story is inspired by actual events. In February 1960 four courageous African-American teens--all freshmen at A&T State College (now North Carolina A&T State University)--sat down at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and asked to be served. The four--Franklin McCain, David Richmond, Joseph McNeil and Ezell Blair (now known as Jibreel Khazan)--were refused. Soon, more students from A&T, Bennett College, Dudley High School, Greensboro College, Guilford College and the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina (now University of North Carolina-Greensboro) joined the protests. Within days, sit-ins had spread across North Carolina. In the weeks and months that followed, sit-ins spread across the nation. The Greensboro sit-ins led to pickets, boycotts and many arrests. College professors visited the jail to keep students abreast of their studies. The sit-ins ended in July when three African-American kitchen workers were served at the lunch counter.

By then, the movement had spawned the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)--created on the campus of Shaw University to organize grassroots activism. Leaders such as John Lewis, now a Georgia congressman, and Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP, emerged from SNCC. The student protesters' direct-action strategy empowered and mobilized the masses, and thus, fueled the freedom struggle.

For Ms. Weatherford, writing Freedom on the Menu was a mission to preserve the past. "Today, memories of the Jim Crow era are fading," says Ms. Weatherford. "I hope to help today's children understand segregation and appreciate the sacrifices made to gain equality."

Ms. Weatherford lives in High Point, N.C., a short drive from where the sit-ins began. She has authored 19 books of poetry, nonfiction and children's literature, including the acclaimed titles, The Sound that Jazz Makes and Remember the Bridge: Poems of a People. Her books have garnered the Carter G. Woodson Award from National Council for the Social Studies, the North Carolina Juvenile Literature Award and an NAACP Image Award nomination.

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