John Henry is Joe's best friend. His skin is the color of "browned butter" and he smells like "pine needles after a good rain." Joe's skin is the color of "pale moths" and according to John Henry, he smells like a "just washed sock." It is 1964 in Mississippi and their friendship thrives despite one persistent obstacle: not being able to visit the same places. When they get ice pops, Joe has to go in the store and buy one for John Henry, who is not allowed inside. John Henry is a good swimmer, but they have to swim in the creek because he is not allowed in the whites-only public pool.
I was not around during the segregation era but my parents have told a few stories, none of them positive, some about not understanding why children they knew could not frequent the same establishments simply because their skin was a different color. I read an article last summer about violent attacks on black people trying to use public pools after desegregation, and how the vulnerability that people can feel in the pool, both with sharing water and having so much of their bodies exposed, made fear of desegregation there so much harder, and resistance to it even more horrifyingly brutal.
The saddest part of this book had to do with the pool. John Henry, the best swimmer Joe knew, would finally get to swim with him in the clear water of the public pool. The boys were so excited that they ran there, with a nickel that they planned to throw to the bottom and try to dive after. But when they arrived the pool was closed and being filled with tar. The owners would rather close the pool than allow someone like John Henry to swim in it. And John Henry was in tears.
I'm only hoping they had better luck at their next stop--going into the store, together, arm in arm, to get ice pops.
Sounds like a good book, and the civil rights era should be explained to young readers who are a couple of generations away from these incidents. The violent outbursts were relatively rare during that time but have received the most attention (the movie "Selma," for example), but non-violent opposition to desegregation was much more common. Officials closed schools, swimming pools and parks rather than allowing racial integration. When courts ultimately overruled these closings, most of the public accepted the change with a shrug.
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