About this item
Bestselling author and journalist Amy Hill Hearth uncovers the story of a little-known figure in U.S. history in this fascinating biography. In 1854, a young African American woman named Elizabeth Jennings won a major victory against a New York City streetcar company, a first step in the process of desegregating public transportation in Manhattan.This illuminating and important piece of the history of the fight for equal rights, illustrated with photographs and archival material from the period, will engage fans of Phillip Hoose's Claudette Colvin and Steve Sheinkin's Most Dangerous.One hundred years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, Elizabeth Jennings's refusal to leave a segregated streetcar in the Five Points neighborhood of Manhattan set into motion a major court case in New York City.
About the Author
Amy Hill Hearth (pronounced HARTH) is a New York Times and Washington Post Bestselling Author. She is also a Peabody Award-Winning Journalist. She is best known as the reporter who discovered the Delany Sisters and wrote HAVING OUR SAY, the bestseller adapted for Broadway and film. She specializes in writing books about women, especially forgotten stories and elder wisdom. Her tenth book (and first for middle grade readers) , STREETCAR TO JUSTICE, is the first biography of Elizabeth Jennings, an all-but-forgotten civil rights icon. STREETCAR TO JUSTICE is a Gold Standard Selection of the Junior Library Guild, an American Library Association Notable Children's Book, and the inaugural winner of the Septima Clark Book Award given by the National Council for the Social Studies in recognition of "the most distinguished young reader non-fiction book depicting women's issues globally." Published January 2, 2018 by the Greenwillow Books Imprint of HarperCollins, STREETCAR TO JUSTICE earned starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus. HAVING OUR SAY: THE DELANY SISTERS' FIRST 100 YEARS, was Ms. Hearth's first book. Published in 1993, it was a New York Times bestseller for more than two years and the winner of numerous awards. Called a classic oral history by Newsweek magazine, HAVING OUR SAY is the story of two centenarian sisters whose father was born into slavery. Hearth's other nonfiction books include the story of a pair of married Holocaust survivors who worked for the Underground during World War II, and a rare oral history of a contemporary female Native American Elder whose name was 'Strong Medicine.' Ms. Hearth is also the author of two feminist-historical novels published by Simon & Schuster/Atria Books: MISS DREAMSVILLE AND THE COLLIER COUNTY WOMEN'S LITERARY SOCIETY (2012) and MISS DREAMSVILLE AND THE LOST HEIRESS OF COLLIER COUNTY (2015) . The novels explore the tensions of life in a small, sleepy town in Florida in the early 1960s. Both novels have been published in five languages to date.
