Let It Shine

Coretta Scott King Honor Book (2001). This illustrated collection profiles ten Black women who challenged injustice and helped move the country toward freedom. Among them, Rosa Parks's refusal to surrender her bus seat set off a boycott that reshaped the nation, Harriet Tubman guided more than three hundred enslaved people north on the Underground Railroad, and Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Andrea Davis Pinkney wrote the text, and Stephen Alcorn painted the portraits. Together they trace the courage these women needed to confront oppression, the setbacks and victories of the civil rights struggle, and the value of speaking up for your beliefs even when it seems no one is listening.

The book includes a biography of each of the ten women: Sojourner Truth, Biddy Mason, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary McLeod Bethune, Ella Josephine Baker, Dorothy Irene Height, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Shirley Chisholm.