Through all this, Celeste perseveres, although she's not always sure she belongs in this place far from her native Detroit. Even worse, the civil rights cause angers some blacks as much as it does the whites. This is dangerous work: shots get fired through windows at night, blacks are arrested and beaten for no reason, jobs are lost for trying to vote, churches––the centers of black communities––are targeted. Owens's house, and her nightly voter registration classes for the adults who wish to be among the first blacks to vote in the state. Celeste's sponsor, Reverend Singleton, drives her back and forth between the Freedom School where Celeste teaches children about black history and self-expression, Mrs. Owens, an older woman who helps Celeste learn the ways of Pineyville.

The office stations her in Pineyville, Mississippi, a town a few miles from the Louisiana border. In this atmosphere of struggling civil rights and racial hatred, Denise Nicholas has set her impressive debut, Freshwater Road.Ĭeleste Tyree is a nineteen year old University of Michigan student who decides to volunteer for the One Man, One Vote movement despite the dangers. In the midst of this Freedom Summer, three college students–– Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner––disappeared and were later found murdered. Blacks stepped off sidewalks to let whites pass, and local law enforcement made sure that they entered back or side doors in public buildings. Drinking fountains and restrooms that no longer had 'Whites Only' signs were still off-limits to blacks (or Negroes, as they still called themselves), who were expected to avoid certain areas or else risk severe beatings, or worse.

Although segregation and second-class citizenship for blacks had officially ended in the United States, little had changed in the Deep South.

In the summer of 1964, students and other volunteers, both white and black, converged on Mississippi to help register black voters in an environment hostile to their efforts. (Reviewed by Debbie Lee Wesselmann OCT 30, 2005)

Freshwater Road by Denise Nicholas