The Lucky Ones by Linda Williams Jackson

Title: The Lucky Ones
Author: Linda Williams Jackson
Publication: Candlewick Press, hardcover, 2022
Genre: Juvenile Historical Fiction
Setting: 1960s Mississippi

Description: Ellis Earl Brown is an ambitious boy who lives with his large family in rural Mississippi. Thanks to Julius Foster, a black teacher in their segregated school, Ellis Earl and his sister Carrie not only get a ride to school but also eat lunch brought by Mr. Foster. Sometimes he can even bring the leftovers home to his family, including a brother too sick to attend school, who might otherwise not eat. But Mr. Forster is doing more than feeding the poor families in his district, he is teaching these children about Thurgood Marshall and Marian Wright (later, Edelman), and explaining that people in DC know they are hungry and are legislating for food stamps for them there. Then Mr. Foster tells them that Senator Robert F. Kennedy is coming to Mississippi to bring attention to the poverty crisis and Ellis Earl is among the group invited to welcome the Senator at the airport.

My Impression: The Lucky Ones was chosen as the de Grummond Book Club selection for October and as I had to leave the last discussion early, I was not there when the book was chosen and knew nothing about it until my copy arrived and I began reading. Jackson is an award-winning children’s author who was raised in Mississippi and still lives there. In the afterword, she explains that although she was a baby when RFK made his visit to Mississippi, her family and siblings were much like the Browns, children with hopes and dreams but living in abject need. She wanted readers to understand what life was like for such a family in the Mississippi Delta in 1967. Because of my father’s work for the Justice Department in Hattiesburg in the early 1960s and his book, Count Them One By One, I had a deep interest in Civil Rights era Mississippi even before I enrolled in graduate school at the University of Southern Mississippi, and I really liked this book although am not sure it would have caught my eye as a child.

The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy and  tragedies for our country that I was barely old enough to absorb when they happened.  I remember attending some kind of outdoor memorial service for MLK with my father but I primarily recall images on television and seeing my mother cry when she saw "Daddy King" on TV, looking heartbroken and physically broken.  My father also brought me with him to a special Mass for RFK at the Cathedral in Boston, celebrated by Cardinal Cushing, and I think I remember from television seeing people watching in tears as his funeral train processed from New York to DC. 

Jackson not only brings Ellis Earl to life but also RFK. During the course of this story, Ellis Earl evolves from a child reading below his grade level to someone with ambition who can relate what he learns in school to his daily life. Ellis Earl is ashamed of the poverty of his home when the Senator walks in with his entourage but what he has learned that year from a teacher who cared about him enables him to speak up and interact intelligently with Senator Kennedy and Marian Wright. He even tells them he wants to be a lawyer like them. The Lucky Ones is a real tribute to teachers and the difference they can make in the lives of underprivileged children.

Source: Library. This is my twenty-third book in the 2022 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge led by Marg at The Intrepid Reader.  I look forward to reading more by this author.