Lesa Cline-Ransome

Discovering a book of Langston Hughes' poetry in the library helps Langston cope with the loss of his mother, relocating from Alabama to Chicago as part of the Great Migration, and being bullied.

"A girl named Ruth Anne tells the story of her family's train journey from North Carolina to New York City as part of the Great Migration"--

Examines the life of the legendary baseball player, who was the first African-American to pitch in a Major League World Series.

Clem can make anybody, even his grumpy older sisters, smile with his jokes. But when his family receives news that his father has died in the infamous Port Chicago disaster, everything begins to fall apart. Clem's mother is forced to work long, tough hours as a maid for a wealthy white family. Soon Clem can barely recognize his home—and himself. Can he live up to his father's legacy? In her award-winning trilogy, Lesa Cline-Ransome masterfully...

Lamb's family strives to better their lives in Jackson, Mississippi, in the late 1930s. Lamb's mother is a hard-working, creative seamstress who cannot reveal she's a lesbian. Lamb's brother has a brilliant mind and has even earned a college scholarship for a black college up north-if only he could curb his impulsiveness and rebellious nature. Lamb herself is a quiet and studious girl. She is also naïve. As she tentatively accepts the friendly overtures...

It wasn't soft/It wasn't black/It wasn't sweet/It wasn't white/It was swing. Brought together by the love of playing jazz music, Teddy Wilson and Benny Goodman broke the color barrier in entertainment when they formed the Benny Goodman Trio with Gene Krupa. This lush and lyrical picture book tells the story of how two musical prodigies from very different backgrounds - one a young black boy growing up in Tuskegee, Alabama, the other the son of struggling...

Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or astronauts walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used their knowledge, pencils, adding machines, and writing paper to calculate the orbital mechanics needed to launch spacecraft. Katherine Johnson was one of these mathematicians who used trajectories and complex equations to chart the space program. Even as Virginia's Jim Crow laws were in place in the early...

It's 1946, and Lymon, uprooted from his life in the Deep South and moved up North, needs that chance. Lymon's father is, for the time being, at Parchman Farm—the Mississippi State Penitentiary—and his mother, whom he doesn't remember all that much, has moved North. Fortunately, Lymon is being raised by his loving grandparents. Together, Lymon and his grandpops share a love of music, spending late summer nights playing the guitar. But Lymon's...

You may think that the story of the saxophone begins with Dexter Gordon or Charlie Parker or on a street corner in New Orleans. It really began in 1840 in Belgium with a young daydreamer named Joseph-Antoine Adolphe Sax-a boy with bad luck but great ideas. Coretta Scott King Honoree Lesa Cline-Ransome unravels the fascinating history of how Adolphe's once reviled instrument was transported across Europe and Mexico to New Orleans. Follow the saxophone's...