“African American Girls, Devlin suggests, had as much physical courage as boys, but more maturity, patience and social finesse, essential qualities for desegregation’s ‘hire wire act.’ […] A Girl Stands at the Door also demonstrates that school desegregation was a grassroots movement.”
Read More“She [Devlin] traces in meticulous and emotionally resonant detail how girls and young women emerged — by circumstance and design — as the face of the educational equality movement that began in the 1930s and culminated in the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.”
Read More“Devlin reminds us that the task of publicly and constitutionally challenging racial discrimination in education was laid on the bodies of black girls. This is a reality with which America has yet to reckon....‘A Girl Stands at the Door’ tells an important story about young black women who ushered in a movement.”
Read MoreListen to A Girl Stands at the Door author Rachel Devlin on NPR’s 1A podcast. Produced in partnership with Smithsonian Magazine.
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