The Rock and the River (Coretta Scott King - John Steptoe Award for New Talent)

The Rock and the River was a good book for several reasons. The first is it is a real rollercoaster of emotions with the different scenes and relationships between the characters. The decisions that the characters make are led by different beliefs in how to fight racism and demand change. Throughout the book the main character goes through a lot of changes in what he believes. He experiences the violence that comes from racism and it forces him to make choices.I think this is a good book for people to read because it really helps you understand the civil rights movement and the frustrations people were experiencing. I would recommend this book for teenagers, grade 7th and over. It’s a rough story and not for little kids. I’m glad I read this book.

I thought The Rock and the River Deserved 4-5 stars. It was a very entertaining and captivating book that made me just want to read more. Every chapter revealed more and more interesting information about the story and every cliffhanger felt like a bomb. Even after the emotional rollercoaster of this book I would still suggest it to readers that enjoy all genres of books.The Rock and the River in my opinion almost had a perfect score for me. The reason I couldn't give this book a 5-5 rating is because of how impactful the ending was. It felt like the whole story just happened and then nothing changed. Overall I still strongly recommend this book to everyone and I think this book deserved a solid 4-5.

"The Black Panther Party, without question, represents the greatest threat to internal security of the country."-- FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in a late 1960's internal memoWith a click of the mouse, you can retrieve images of the Black Panther Party from the late 1960s -- the images that were broadcast into our suburban living rooms when Holling Hoodhood (from THE WEDNESDAY WARS) and I were junior high school students on Long Island. They were pretty unsettling images -- serious-faced black guys with those black berets and shotguns -- at least if, like Holling and me in the spring of 1968, you were thirteen-year-old suburban white kids living a million miles away from those places where policemen far too often had people of color feeling totally unsafe in America."The cops took turns striking Bucky with their nightsticks, fists, and feet. The radio in the background seemed to sing louder, the cheerful pop tune warring with the sick thwack of baton blows against skin."The tall cop bent close to Bucky, his square nose practically touching Bucky's cheek, and said something. Bucky reacted sharply, jerking backward, his fists stretched out in front of him. The cop laughed and hammered Bucky's arms with his baton."The music cut suddenly and the silence suffocated the street. The air grew thick, hard to breathe without choking. Only the hum of cars on nearby streets disturbed the still air. The stocky cop lifted the radio from his belt and spoke into it."Maxie moved closer to me. This couldn't be happening right in front of us, especially not to Bucky. It went on forever. Finally the tall cop brought his nightstick down hard against Bucky's temple. The blow connected, making a loud crack. Maxie turned her face into my shoulder. I slid my arm over Maxie's back, hugging her closer."In the spring of 1968 in Chicago, Sam is thirteen. He is the son of black Civil Rights activist Roland Childs, a confidante of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Like Dr. King, Mr. Childs is an uncompromising advocate and practitioner of nonviolence.Sam and his older brother Steven (Stick) have grown up in the Movement. But lately, Stick, a voracious reader, has been surreptitiously studying the books and magazines being shared by his friends who are becoming involved with the Black Panthers.When Sam and Stick encounter white thugs armed with bats, bottles, and sticks who are beating participants at the edge of the crowd at one of Father's protests, Stick gets into a fight and is bashed in the head with a broken bottle while trying to protect an elderly woman who is being attacked. The brothers split the scene with the approach of cops (They know which color will get arrested no matter who caused the trouble.) and head to the nearest hospital to get Stick's forehead sewn up.To observe the treatment of the brothers at that Chicago hospital is to begin to understand what life was still like for blacks dealing with white America in 1968. For black kids like Sam and Stick, you could be in danger, or at least be treated inhumanely, at any given moment. For some like their close friend Bucky -- who had done absolutely nothing wrong -- the policemen who are supposed to be protecting you can so arbitrarily hurt you or kill you."Violence begets violence; hate begets hate; and toughness begets toughness. It is all a descending spiral, and the end is destruction -- for everyone." -- Dr. King, 1958I have to admit that early on in reading THE ROCK AND THE RIVER, as I began to see the path Stick is embarking upon, I got prepared to tell stories of my high school friend Jamie Dunn who so greatly affected me back then with his advocacy and modeling of nonviolence. But my expectations of what was to come in THE ROCK AND THE RIVER had far too much to do with my simplistic perceptions dating back forty years of what the Black Panther Party was all about.In the course of Sam Childs' coming of age story, amidst the American history I thought I knew so well, author Kekla Magoon has radically altered my understanding of the Black Panther Party. In her debut novel, Magoon, who studied history as an undergraduate, does an exceptional job of integrating many sides of very complex racial and political issues into this tense tale of an adolescent who has grown up in the Civil Rights Movement."Maybe now I could return to Father's world, bring all of myself back to the place I'd started from. Maybe I could learn to ignore the gnawing in the pit of my stomach telling me it wasn't enough."There are powerful metaphors to be found in the huge building block structure that the brothers have been constructing for years in the room they share -- or shared until Stick was no longer willing or able to abide by Father's orders. Sam finds himself stuck between Father and Stick who are as similar in their uncompromising natures as they are seemingly different in their beliefs of what is the right thing to do. While engaging in an innocent relationship with his schoolmate Maxie, he has to deal on a daily basis with life and death issues.Sam must make critical decisions on whether or not -- and if so, how -- to get involved. Will he be the rock or the river? Like me, he must come to a true understanding of the philosophy that his father lives by and what the Black Panthers and brotherhood are really all about.

Thirteen-year-old Samuel "Sam" Childs is the son of prominent civil rights activist, Roland Childs. Roland is a (fictional) associate and protégé of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a supporter of non-violent demonstrations. Sam's brother Steven ("Stick"), meanwhile, is a budding Black Panther. A series of events - an altercation at a demonstration, the wrongful arrest of a friend (Bucky), finding a gun which Stick has hidden in their shared room, and getting involved with his girlfriend in Panther-related activities such as the free breakfast and evening "political education classes" - places Sam between these two opposing forces and pulls him apart as he struggles to decide between "the rock" or "the river".This book and I did not get off on the right foot together and it didn't get much better as it went along. I seriously believe that if an author is going to set her book in a real city, she needs to use real geography. I suppose I've read many books that didn't follow this rule and perhaps I missed it, but having lived in Chicago for 20+ years, I couldn't miss it this time. The book opens on the steps of a courthouse with wide columns amidst the tall buildings, presumably downtown Chicago. Unfortunately, there are no such courthouses in downtown Chicago (or any other part of Chicago), and certainly none within easy walking distance of a "main hospital". Sam's girlfriend lives on "Bryant Street", which doesn't exist in Chicago. Sam's house is supposedly "uphill" from the projects Maxie lives in. I'd like to know where in Chicago is "uphill" from anywhere else in Chicago. Said house also has a driveway, which is possible, but not likely - most Chicago houses utilize the alleys. At one point, Sam narrates, "The lake was a short distance away. I had no idea I'd run so far." You mean he had no idea he'd run over an eight-lane major thoroughfare? Or does the author not know about Lake Shore Drive?At another point there is a demonstration on the steps of the same courthouse mentioned above at the time Bucky is brought for trial and the author describes how Bucky is brought into the courthouse building in "an orange prison jumpsuit". The only problem is that criminal trials in Chicago are held at 26th and California in a building that adjoins the grounds of Cook County Jail. Inmates are brought to trial through the back of the courthouse early in the morning and held until time for their trial. No crowd ever sees the inmates enter the courthouse. Not to mention no civil rights lawyer worth his salt would allow his client to attend his trial in "County Orange". And the author needs to learn the difference between jail and prison.Each of these details alone is perhaps trivial, but it adds up to the fact that the author doesn't know the city she is writing about, which hurts her credibility. Perhaps I was already biased by the geography, but I also didn't get the feeling that the author really knew her characters either. I found the dialogue stilted and clichéd, like I was watching a bad soap opera.In fact, I found the writing in general to be overwrought and melodramatic. For one thing, the author does far too much telling and not enough showing. She has Sam narrate every convoluted thought rather than having him do things which would show how torn he is between his father, his brother, and trying to find his own identity.Just after the climactic scene, Sam tells us, "Until then, I had never known anger...." But the whole book is about anger. Sam and Stick are always exploding at each other, their father, their mother, and every one else, often for reasons which the author doesn't clearly elucidate. Sam comes across as a stubborn little brat who thinks he knows everything but who really knows nothing at all. His humbling in the last few pages does not redeem him and I found him unlikable until the end, even though I am sure that was not the author's intention. Other characters as well are, at times, portrayed as too extreme to be believed. All police officers - and almost all whites in general - for instance, are depicted as masses of maniacal hatred toward blacks. The reality was, of course, more nuanced. Sure, some whites literally hated blacks, but most harbored a mixture of feelings from empathy to misunderstanding to fear, especially toward the militant Black Panthers.I will give kudos to the author for her presentation of the similarities and differences between the non-violent civil rights movement and the Black Panthers. Too often the Panthers are portrayed solely as militant and violent, overlooking the lion's share of their contribution to black empowerment: free breakfasts for children, free health clinics, organizing and teaching blacks to learn to help themselves in general. And I will give credit for portraying the struggle of a young black boy-man growing up surrounded by inequality, injustice, racism and violence and trying to come to terms with his own feelings about violence and retaliation. But overall, the book simply wasn't convincing for me.As a sort of side note, I have to bring up a point the author makes in her "Author's Note" at the end. In describing the civil rights movement, she talks about the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott and how that ended segregation on public transportation. Except that it didn't. The City of Montgomery would never have backed down and desegregated the buses on its own, no matter how much it was hurting economically - it was too much of a threat to "the Southern Way of Life". It took the Supreme Court decision in Browder v. Gayle to legally end bus segregation. This point is important because it goes to the heart of the difference between the non-violent civil rights movement and the Black Panthers. The Black Panthers were right that there is much that blacks can do for themselves to become empowered. But ultimately, to change society, blacks had to (and still have to) work with whites to change laws. The Black Panther movement could never have generated enough white sympathy to win Supreme Court rulings such as Browder and Brown, and certainly not legislative victories like the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. It took the determined but loving patience of the non-violent movement to accomplish that.

1968, Chicago. Thirteen year old Sam is the son of a prominent civil rights activist, a protegée of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but the Black Panthers have come to town; his older brother Stick believes in their message.What’s amazing about this book is how it does not fulfil expectations: Hollywood will never pick up this script, because it doesn’t portray anyone as right, wrong, good, or evil. There are complex choices to be made, as in life, and their effects will be measured in human souls and blood. Buy it for a young person. Read it.

Had to read for an class assignment and liked it and I got a good grade on it

Mama mia