Now Is Your Time!: The African-American Struggle for Freedom

By Walter Dean Myers

Book Overview

A Coretta Scott King Award winner that is more timely than ever--excellent narrative nonfiction that's "history at its best."* Like Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, Now Is Your Time explores American history through the stories of the people whose experiences have shaped and continue to shape the America in which we live.

History has made me an African American. It is an Africa that I have come from, and an America that I have helped to create.
Since they were first brought as captives to Virginia, the people who would become African Americans have struggled for freedom. Thousands fought for the rights of all Americans during the Revolutionary War, and for their own rights during the Civil War. On the battlefield, through education, and through their creative genius, they have worked toward one goal: that the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness be denied no one.
Fired by the legacy of these men and women, the struggle continues today.
"Portrays the quests of individual Africans against the background of broader historical movements. Instead of a comprehensive, strict chronology, Myers offers, through freed slave Ibrahima, investigative reporter Ida Wells, artist Meta Warrick Fuller, inventor George Latimore, artist Dred Scott, the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, and others, history at its best--along with deeper understanding of past and contemporary events. Readers will grasp reasons behind incidents ranging from bewildering Supreme Court decisions to the historical need for the black extended family. Intriguing and rousing." (Publishers Weekly starred review*).
Walter Dean
Myers was a New York Times bestselling author, Printz Award
winner, five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, two-time Newbery
Honor recipient, and the National Ambassador for Young People's
Literature. Maria Russo, writing in the New York
Times, called Myers
"one of the greats and a champion of diversity in children's books well
before the cause got mainstream attention."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0064461203
• ISBN13: 9780064461207
• Release Date: December 1991
• Publisher: Amistad Books for Young Readers
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 5.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.8" x 9.1"
• Age Range: 8 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 3 and higher

Customer Reviews

Should be required reading

One purpose for the writing of this book, "Now is Your Time! The African-American Struggle for Freedom" is to fill the need for a readable and accessable text book on African-American History for children. I've used the book to teach my own child about the struggle for freedom faced by those of African descent as well as a stepping stone in teaching about oppression in the local school system. The book does an admirable job of showing the over all climate of Early America and doesn't gloss over any of the harsher realities of slavery. This book also highlights many of the key people in the struggle for freedom and civil rights. I believe this book to be one of a kind and necessary reading for all who wish to grow in their own understanding.