Freedom Lessons: A Novel

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Published 2019

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-63152-610-7

ISBN: 978-1-63152-611-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019942982

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This is a work of fiction based on personal experience and on primary sources, personal interviews, and a dissertation documenting the experiences of others during the school year of 1969–70.
Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

I am most grateful for Gary L. Clarke’s permission to use information and phrases from his dissertation, “Even the Books Were Separate: Court-Mandated Desegregation and Educators’ Professional Lives During the Caddo Crossover of 1969-70.”

Permission given for the use of the term or phrase “Even the books were separate”, “The Crossover”, “Freedom of Choice “,“I’m going to graduate”, “you know we need someone to discipline the Black kids”, “we’ve been robbed”, “I only want the best to keep their classes.” Permission to use the background of the high school students’ experiences from the narratives in the dissertation.
Used examples of no black cheerleaders, no black football players on the bench, no black voices in student government, school walkouts and boycotts, and parents bringing lunch to students on the lawn during a walkout to tell the story from a student point of view.

The use of the words “Negro” and “colored”, though not politically correct by today’s standards, is era-specific and not intended in any kind of pejorative sense.