Loretta Little Looks Back by Andrea Davis Pinkney

Three members of a black sharecropper family in Mississippi tell their stories. Loretta's life could have been different if she'd been able to stay in school, but her hands had a knack for cotton picking that her family needed to survive. Her younger brother Roly describes the humiliation of being a black man and the joy of falling in love. His daughter, Aggie B. and her aunt Loretta work together for the right to vote, learning everything they can about the law in Mississippi so Loretta and other black neighbors can pass the outrageous poll tests and earn the right to vote. They accompany civil rights legend Fannie Lou Hammer to the Democratic National Convention in 1964 where they find that racial prejudice isn't limited to the south. With a mix of fictional first-person narratives, spoken-word poems, traditional storytelling, church preaching, and drawings, the Pinkneys present a kind of living history tableau for young people to experience life in the rural 20th century south. 

It felt fitting that I finished this the night of the Georgia Senate elections.