The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is observed annually every 21st of March since the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed it in 1966 and called on the international community to redouble its efforts to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination after police opened fire and killed 69 people at a peaceful demonstration in South Africa against the apartheid pass laws last 1960 on the very same day.
The year is 1964 when there were still divisions between the South and North of the United States of America and there are racially motivated attacks, especially in Mississippi. Alice is finding life in Mississippi difficult, with the threat of an attack on her home from the Ku Klux Klan, her new school being one of the first in the area to accept coloured children and being picked on because she is not the same as the rest of her class.
She is nicknamed "Yankee Girl" and taunted by the popular girls at school she calls the Cheerleaders, although she soon discovers that the other new girl, Valerie - the school's first black student - suffers much worse. Soon Alice realizes the only way to befriend the girls is to seem like a co-conspirator in their plans to make Valerie miserable. It takes a horrible tragedy for her to realize the complete ramifications of following the crowd instead of her heart.
The story travels with Alice through this time, as she has to make some difficult life and social choices, which could affect her life and her parents. This is the first book of Mary Ann Rodman, a former school media specialist and university librarian, and is based on her own childhood experience. The main characters are drawn true to form while the plot is one which will make any intelligent and caring person angry but will also make those same people sad because any of this had even happened.
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