alabama

A biography of Lonnie Johnson, an engineer at NASA who is best know for inventing the Super Soaker water gun.

A biography of civil rights activist and icon Rosa Parks.

In Alabama, in the summer of 1961, twelve-year-old Johnny Cannon gets mixed up in a Mafia blood feud as he searches for his happy ending with Martha Macker.

"Give[s] readers a...glimpse into the boyhood of Civil Rights leader John Lewis. John wants to be a preacher when he grows up--a leader whose words stir hearts to change, minds to think, and bodies to take action. But why wait? When John is put in charge of the family farm's flock of chickens, he discovers that they make a wonderful congregation! So he preaches to his flock, and they listen, content under his watchful care, riveted by the rhythm of his voice. Includes an author's note about John Lewis, who grew up to be a member of the Freedom Riders, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and demonstrator on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, and is now a Georgia congressman"--Provided by publisher.

The author's father courageously defended a Black man charged with raping a White woman in 1930's Alabama. His father was Foster Beck, the trial was the State of Alabama vs. Charles White, Alias, and it was much publicized when Harper Lee was twelve years old. It is the trial that was the inspiration for Harper Lee's book, To Kill a Mockingbird. And it is the trial that the community was heavily invested in with its dramatic testimonies and emotional outcome. It took an immense toll on those involved, including attorney Foster Beck. Joseph Madison Beck, himself an attorney, talks of his family's history and how race relations, class, and the memory of Southern defeat in the Civil War produced such a haunting distortion of justice, and how it may figure into our literary imagination.

Examines the rape trials of the Scottsboro boys, the nine young African-American men accused of assaulting two white women in Alabama in 1931, and discusses the case's impact on American race relations the civil rights movement.

Lonnie Johnson was always building things. As a kid he made rockets. As a teenager he built a robot from scratch. As an adult he worked for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the Galileo orbiter and probe that studied Jupiter. And then one day, while hooking up his latest invention to the bathroom sink to test it out...WHOOSH! Meet the innovative engineer who unexpectedly invented one of the most popular toys of all time - the Super Soaker.

"Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern are off to Alabama to visit their grandmother, Big Ma, and her mother, Ma Charles. Across the way lives Ma Charles's half sister, Miss Trotter. The two half sisters haven't spoken in years. As Delphine hears about her family history, she uncovers the surprising truth that's been keeping the sisters apart. But when tragedy strikes, Delphine discovers that the bonds of family run deeper than she ever knew possible"--Publisher's web site.

"Describes the brutal killing of a young black man in Alabama, and subsequent conviction of two Klansmen in 1981 and the civil suit against the United Klans of America that exposed the true motives and philosophy of the organization and ultimately bankrupted them"--OCLC.