{"id":37082,"date":"2015-02-28T12:30:25","date_gmt":"2015-02-28T17:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=37082"},"modified":"2015-02-28T13:25:01","modified_gmt":"2015-02-28T18:25:01","slug":"with-the-might-of-angels-the-diary-of-dawnie-rae-johnson-hadley-virginia-1954-by-andrea-davis-pinkney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/with-the-might-of-angels-the-diary-of-dawnie-rae-johnson-hadley-virginia-1954-by-andrea-davis-pinkney\/","title":{"rendered":"With the Might of Angels: The Diary of Dawnie Rae Johnson, Hadley, Virginia, 1954 by Andrea Davis Pinkney"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"With<\/a>On the morning of her 12th birthday, Dawnie Rae Johnson\u00a0\u2013 named for the new day rising when she was born\u00a0\u2013 wakes to find a surprise under her pillow: a diary made by her 8-year-old brother Goober. The year will turn out to be crucial, not only for Dawnie, but for her family, her community, and even the nation. Exactly one day before Dawnie’s birthday,\u00a0on May 17, 1954,\u00a0the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision which ruled state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

That fall in 1954, Dawnie became the first\u00a0\u2013 and only\u00a0\u2013 African American student to enroll in the local all-white school, Prettyman Coburn. Although two of Dawnie’s friends\u00a0had also been chosen to enter Prettyman, their parents\u00a0refused to send\u00a0their children where they were clearly not wanted.<\/p>\n

The Johnsons’ decision to seek a better education for Dawnie begets serious consequences. Dawnie’s father loses his job, her brother Goober \u2013 who today would be recognized as being along the autism spectrum \u2013 gets aggressively\u00a0hassled, and the family’s\u00a0longtime friends and neighbors criticize the Johnsons for being “uppity.”<\/p>\n

Dawnie, too, wonders if staying at Prettyman is the right decision: “I miss just\u00a0being<\/em>\u00a0at school, not\u00a0being a Negro\u00a0<\/em>at school.” Struggles aside, she’s not without moments of ironic humor as she muses about the school’s namesake, “a rich Virginian who made his money\u00a0in the pork rind business,” and quips that\u00a0becoming a doctor hinges on her “attending a school built from the skin of pigs.”<\/p>\n

Like the bus boycotts yet to come in Montgomery, Alabama, the community finally rallies around the Johnson family, giving up milk, cream, cheese, and more, from\u00a0the local dairy whose owner makes his racism all too clear.\u00a0In spite of both children and adults at school waiting to watch her fail, Dawnie is as tenacious as she is intelligent; she refuses to allow\u00a0setbacks to last long enough to impede her progress toward success.<\/p>\n

In addition to a story well told, Angels\u00a0<\/em>ends with almost 40 additional pages of historical notes about American life in 1954; numerous photographs of events, places, people who were pivotal during that time;\u00a0biographical notes on “Real People Mentioned in Dawnie Rae’s Diary” including Harry F. Byrd, Claudette Colvin, and Thurgood Marshall; an explanation of “Negro History Week” which has since\u00a0morphed into African American History Month; a “Civil Rights Timeline”; and an extended “About the Author” section that not only includes Andrea Davis Pinkney\u2019s many accomplishments as a multi-award-winning, bestselling author and lauded Scholastic editor both, but also why she needed to write this<\/em> integration story.\u00a0Pinkney\u00a0explains about being inspired by her\u00a0family’s experiences with integration, including\u00a0the “harrowing integration stories” of a Virginia cousin, as well as her own memories of being the only black student at her first school.<\/p>\n

Indeed, truth only makes fiction that much more believable. With the help of Martin Luther King, Jackie Robinson, and a new best friend from New York who happens to be Jewish, Pinkney makes sure Dawnie\u00a0gets exactly what she deserves.<\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Middle Grade, Young Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2007<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the morning of her 12th birthday, Dawnie Rae Johnson\u00a0\u2013 named for the new day rising when she was born\u00a0\u2013 wakes to find a surprise under her pillow: a diary made by her 8-year-old brother Goober. The year will turn out to be crucial, not…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,142,6,30,31],"tags":[6245,336,6608,5807,22,10,11,39,42,6237,44,6244],"class_list":["post-37082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-audio","category-black-african-american","category-fiction","category-middle-grade-readers","category-young-adult-readers","tag-andrea-davis-pinkney","tag-autism","tag-bookdragon","tag-channie-waites","tag-civil-rights","tag-family","tag-friendship","tag-parent-child-relationship","tag-series","tag-series-dear-america","tag-siblings","tag-with-the-might-of-angels"],"yoast_head":"\nWith the Might of Angels: The Diary of Dawnie Rae Johnson, Hadley, Virginia, 1954 by Andrea Davis Pinkney - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/with-the-might-of-angels-the-diary-of-dawnie-rae-johnson-hadley-virginia-1954-by-andrea-davis-pinkney\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"With the Might of Angels: The Diary of Dawnie Rae Johnson, Hadley, Virginia, 1954 by Andrea Davis Pinkney - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On the morning of her 12th birthday, Dawnie Rae Johnson\u00a0\u2013 named for the new day rising when she was born\u00a0\u2013 wakes to find a surprise under her pillow: a diary made by her 8-year-old brother Goober. 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