new orleans

After her father dies, nobody's left to take April in except her mom's sister, a free spirit who's a chef in New Orleans. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Miles, a bayou boy, brings April into the heart of the Big Easy. He takes her to the cemetery where nineteenth-century voodoo queen Marie Laveau is buried, and there, April gets a shocking clue about her own past.

"Following the Civil War, feelings were mixed about the freedoms that Lincoln had granted to African American citizens through his Emancipation Proclamation. A group in Louisiana decided to challenge a state law that required companies to have railway cars separated by race. They orchestrated a situation in which a white-looking black man would sit in the white only part of the train and announce he was colored. In a landmark decision that supported the racist feelings in some areas of the country following the Civil War, the effort to secure equal rights at this time failed. The book provides insight into the details of the case and also includes questions to consider, primary source documents, and a chronology"--Amazon.com.

A video tour of New Orleans.