The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, a Young Civil Rights Activist

Cynthia Levinson

Jan 2017 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

Meet the youngest known child to be arrested for a civil rights protest in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963, in this moving picture book that proves you’re never too little to make a difference.

Nine-year-old Audrey Faye Hendricks intended to go places and do things like anybody else.

So when she heard grown-ups talk about wiping out Birmingham’s segregation laws, she spoke up. As she listened to the preacher’s words, smooth as glass, she sat up tall. And when she heard the plan—picket those white stores! March to protest those unfair laws! Fill the jails!—she stepped right up and said, I’ll do it! She was going to j-a-a-il!

Audrey Faye Hendricks was confident and bold and brave as can be, and hers is the remarkable and inspiring story of one child’s role in the Civil Rights Movement.

About the author

Cynthia Levinson is the author of nonfiction books for young readers that focus on social justice, including The Youngest Marcher, The People’s Painter, and Fault Lines in the Constitution. Her books have received the Sibert Medal, the Carter G. Woodson Book Award, the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, and numerous other honors. She has two daughters, two sons-in-law, four grandchildren, and two grand-dogs—all of whom are thoroughly splendid. Cynthia and her husband divide their time between Austin and Boston, which, helpfully, rhyme, in case she gets lost.

Vanessa Brantley-Newton is a self-taught artist and has attended both FIT and SVA of New York, where she studied fashion and children’s illustration. Vanessa is the illustrator of A Night Out with Mama by Quvenzhané Wallis, The Youngest Marcher by Cynthia Levinson, Presenting…Tallulah by Tori Spelling, and Early Sunday Morning by Denene Millner, among others. She hopes that when people look at her work, it will make them feel happy in some way, or even reclaim a bit of their childhood.