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Belle, The Last Mule at Gee's Bend: A Civil Rights Story, by Calvin Alexander Ramsey, Bettye Stroud
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A true story inspires the moving tale of a mule that played a key role in the civil rights movement-- and a young boy who sees history anew.
Sitting on a bench waiting for his mother, Alex spies a mule chomping on greens in someone's garden, and he can't help but ask about it.""Ol Belle?" says Miz Pettway next to him. "She can have all the collards she wants. She's earned it." And so begins the tale of a simple mule in Gee's Bend, Alabama, who played a singular part in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. When African-Americans in a poor community-- inspired by a visit from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.-- defied local authorities who were trying to stop them from registering to vote, many got around a long detour on mule-drawn wagons. Later, after Dr. King's assassination, two mules from Gee's Bend pulled the farm wagon bearing his casket through the streets of Atlanta. As Alex looks into the eyes of gentle Belle, he begins to understand a powerful time in history in a very personal way.
- Sales Rank: #1350262 in Books
- Published on: 2016-01-26
- Released on: 2016-01-26
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 10.25" h x .13" w x 9.88" l, .81 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
Review
An intergenerational story filled with heart and soul.
—Kirkus Reviews
Lovely to look at, informative, infinitely readable. The kind of book you can simply enjoy reading and having on your shelf.
—A Fuse 8 Production (SLJ blog)
About the Author
Calvin Alexander Ramsey is a playwright, photographer, and painter. He adapted one of his plays for print as RUTH AND THE GREEN BOOK, illustrated by Floyd Cooper. Calvin Alexander Ramsey lives in Atlanta.
John Holyfield has illustrated several books for children, including THE HALLELUJAH FLIGHT by Phil Bildner. John Holyfield lives in Virginia.
Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Bella
By E. R. Bird
Certain historical figures inspire multiple generations of children's authors to go a little hog wild and pig crazy writing up their lives for general posterity. The biography section of my children's room, like many out there, suffers from an overabundance of Lincoln/Edison/Washington/etc. bios. Even utterly worthy folks like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. get a little overdone, causing one to wonder why folks even bother. Do authors keep writing about the same five folks because schools concentrate only on those people and therefore it is more lucrative to give them credit over and over again? How hard is it to find new takes on overdone cultural heroes? Enter "Belle, the Last Mule at Gee's Bend" by Calvin Alexander Ramsey and Bettye Stroud. Shelved in the fiction picture book section of your local library, the book actually places the bulk of its attention on a true moment in history, little remembered in schools and textbooks. Though it is couched in a made up story, Ramsey and Stroud have found a way to give Dr. King's legacy a new tale and take. The end result is a book that may straddle the line between story and truth, but there will be few who argue that it straddles the line between good and bad.
Alex is bored. His mom has dragged him along to Gee's Bend so that she can buy a quilt, but while she's doing so he's stuck on an old porch with nothing to look at but an old mule chomping on somebody's garden of collard greens. When an old woman joins him on the bench and introduces herself as Miz Pettway Alex inquires as to why the mule is allowed to eat all the greens it wants. She explains that Belle isn't just any old mule. Back in the day when segregation was rampant Dr. Martin Luther King visited Gee's Bend. After encouraging the residents to take the ferry the people find that the white folks in Camden across the river are so intent to deny the vote that they've closed down the ferry. Undeterred the Benders had their mules pull them along and around the river the long way. Later when Dr. King died, Belle and a mule named Ada were selected to pull his coffin along its funeral route. Of course state policeman tried to stop the mules from arriving, but when it was clear that there would be a national incident if the mules were not taken to the funeral, state troopers escorted the animals the rest of the way. That is why Belle, for all that she's a mule, is important. As Alex himself says, "even an old mule can be a hero." An Author's Note explaining the true history of this incident alongside a photograph of the actual mules pulling Dr. King's coffin, is included at the end.
Many is the children's librarian who has picked up a work of historical fiction like this and encountered what can only be described as Needless Exposition: The Book. Let me describe it to you. In such a book a child character walks up to an adult and asks something along the lines of, "Grandpa what was World War II / Jim Crow / The Bay of Pigs?" (take your pick). Then the adult tells them what they want the reader to know and there you go. Instant book. Such stories don't always make a lot of sense either. Oftentimes you'll encounter a narrator who by all rights would have been told such a story long ago, or the adult narrator will mention facts that would be obvious to the child in the story, though not the one reading the book. Part of what I like so much about "Belle" is that Ramsey and Stroud really put a lot of work into giving Alex a reason for wanting to hear what Miz Pettway has to say. First off, he's bored out of his skull, so while an average boy his age wouldn't necessarily want to hear an old person tell a story, "he was curious and there was nothing else to do." Second, the reason he's curious is because Miz Pettway has said that an old mule is a hero and there's a mystery behind that statement. Most kids don't want to be lectured about history, but if you give `em the double whammy of mystery plus boredom, you've got `em hooked.
The writing works really well within the context of the history. Perhaps the most chilling moment comes when the white sheriff of Camden justifies shutting down the ferry and denying the Gee's Bend residents the right to vote by saying, "We didn't close the ferry because they were black. We closed it because they forgot they were black." It's just the right level of complicated to inspire family and classroom discussions of what exactly he means. As for Ms. Pettway and Alex, their dialogue is natural and unaffected. There's none of that stilted speaking that comes when authors have a tin ear for regular speech. The result is a book that reads aloud particularly well.
Reading this story I did have to wonder what year Alex existed in. Interestingly it is illustrator John Holyfield who clears up much of the confusion of when this book takes place. Holyfield's best known work to date has been on Phil Bildner's "The Hallelujah Flight", a book that, like this one, took a historical moment in African-American history and cast a thin veneer of fiction over it. His style resembles that of fellow illustrator Frank Morrison, though his figures are perhaps a little less spiky about their limbs. So while librarians may read this book and then try to calculate the estimated lifespan of your average mule, Holyfield saves us some time and trouble by placing visual clues in his narrative. Alex, our hero, holds in his hand an old paddleball, the like of which I've not seen in years. His hair too takes on a particularly Afro like size and scope, suggesting this tale to be perhaps ten years or so after the death of Dr. King. That kind of timing works by my estimation. After ten years kids were learning the details of the Civil Rights Movement in school. King, to them, was more historical figure than actual person. Holyfield works primarily in the realm of acrylics. Brown appears to be the most prominent color at work here, and while it is by no means the only one, I did sometimes find myself yearning for some brighter fare.
Gee's Bend appears in children's books at regular intervals. Recently we've seen books like Patricia McKissack's "Stitchin' and Pullin': A Gee's Bend Quilt" and "Leaving Gee's Bend" by Irene Latham. What's nice about this book, of course, is that it looks beyond the quilts to the area's moment in Dr. King's life and death. It's a take never before handled in a children's picture book format, and that it slides as easily as it does into this category is a testament to the authors' skills. Lovely to look at, informative, infinitely readable. The kind of book you can simply enjoy reading and having on your shelf.
For ages 4-8.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Rutgers University Project on Economics and Children
By Yana V. Rodgers
While young Alex sat on a bench outside waiting for his mother, he passed the time observing an old mule chomping away on collard greens in someone's garden. Turns out that garden belonged to Miz Pettway, a senior citizen as full of stories as she was enamored with that mule.
It did not take long before Alex learned that this mule, Belle, had played an important role in the Civil Rights movement. Not only did Belle help to pull wagonloads of African Americans around the river to vote in Camden after the white folks there shut down the ferry, Belle was also one of two mules that pulled the coffin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. through the streets of Atlanta after his assassination.
John Holyfield's striking acrylic paintings add an even deeper layer of meaning to this simple story about how an impoverished town in Alabama became engaged in the Civil Rights movement with a famous quilting group and a less famous but equally important mule named Belle. The book makes a valuable resource for introducing concepts such as discrimination, jobs, and social justice to young readers who are beginning to learn about the history of U.S. race relations.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
A different take on civil rights and Dr. Martin Luther King
By M. Tanenbaum
There are so many children's books about Martin Luther King, and I would never have guessed from the appealing cover illustration on this title that this was a book that touched on civil rights and especially on Dr. King.
Belle, the Last Mule at Gee's Bend, is a delightful historical fiction picture book which tells the story of an ordinary mule named Belle who leads an extraordinary life in the small town of Gee's Bend, Alabama. At the beginning of this tale, we meet Alex, a bored young boy who is waiting for his mother to buy one of the famous quilts that Gee's Bend is known for. With nothing to do but watch an old mule, he's happy to listen to an old lady from the town tell him a story about why the mule, who's eating her greens, is so special.
It turns out that Martin Luther King visited Gee's Bend to encourage its black citizens to vote. But when whites got wind of the voting drive, they shut down the ferry that crossed the river to Camden, where voting took place. That didn't stop the courageous citizens of Gee's Bend, who hooked up wagonloads full of people to mules, including Belle, to go around the river to vote. But that wasn't the end of Belle's special mission; she was also called upon as one of a team to pull Dr. King's coffin through the streets of Atlanta during his funeral parade. Alex learns an important lesson from this touching story: even an old mule can be a hero.
An author's note provides further details about Belle's story, particularly how Dr. King himself wanted mules to pull his casket when he died, with the mules serving as a powerful symbol of King's fight to help poor blacks across the country.
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