MY SELMA

An African American author and artist recounts her compelling story of growing up in Selma, Alabama, during the height of the civil rights movement.

Brown, who was born in the early 1950s, the second youngest of five siblings, came of age during a time of tremendous social upheaval. She begins her remembrance of the Selma of her tween years by highlighting the love and mutual support that existed within the Black community. This love is particularly evident in her interactions with her siblings. As well as relating memories of events that made the national news, she shares many touching anecdotes of family, church, and school life. While loved ones tried to shield her from the bitter impact of racism, several incidents she witnessed and experienced with White people in her town juxtapose the two distinct Selmas in existence. She had a front-row seat to the ways many Black residents supported Martin Luther King Jr. and others fighting for civil rights; others thought he was stirring up trouble and wanted nothing to do with protests. Through these stories, readers are introduced to the highs and lows of African American life in the Jim Crow South. Brown uses language effectively to bring the times to life, and emerging from the retelling of her history are portraits of people who shaped her thought patterns and ways of being in her formative years.

A panoramic yet intimate depiction of a family experiencing radical social changes.