I don't think we had a big celebration like Miss Bloom did, but it was definitely a milestone.' Sunflower County, Miss., during my college years, and I do remember that it was in the early '60s and they did open the library to everybody. On the memory of her library being integrated

when I was a child and that really was most of my interaction with black people until I went to college.' 'We were so separate, and the black people that I knew were mostly people who either worked for my family or, you know, we still saw them working in the cotton fields. On the author's personal experience with segregation for someone to come all the way from Ohio like Laura and her mother did, that was really an event in this little town.' 'Laura is a Yankee,' author Augusta Scattergood tells NPR's Michele Norris. Laura is different from the other white girls Glory knows in Mississippi. In this town, black and white populations are separated in almost all aspects of life.Īnother big change for Glory is a new friend she makes at the local library. The family's maid, Emma, is Glory's caretaker and confidante - and the only black person Glory knows well.

Glory's dad is a preacher, her mom has died, and her big sister is about to enter high school. But this is no ordinary summer - it's 1964 and the town has shut down the so-called 'community' swimming pool to avoid integration. In July, NPR's Backseat Book Club traveled to Hanging Moss, Miss., where Gloriana June Hemphill, better known as Glory, is just an ordinary little girl. She now reviews books for magazines and websites, including Delta Magazine and The Christian Science Monitor. Augusta Scattergood was in the fifth grade when she decided she wanted to become a librarian.

Glory be by augusta scattergood