Christine Welldon

"In this poignant coming of age young adult novel Sterling Crawford is a young African American kid living in New Orleans in 1906 learning about jazz, the legendary Buddy Bolden and forced to face racism, a loaded justice system and racial barriers that divide a nation."--

African-American serviceman Lanier Phillips was just eighteen years old when he was rescued from a sinking warship off the coast of Newfoundland in 1942 — a turn of events that transformed his life and ignited a lasting passion for civil rights. The son of sharecroppers from the Deep South, and the great-grandson of slaves, Lanier knew only hatred for white people. As a child he was told never to look a white man in the face, for fear of a lynching....