Anatomy of a Protest Movement Sparks New Book by Award-Winning Author Amy Nathan

CHAPPAQUA, N.Y., Nov. 29, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring are in the news, and questions about protest movements and civil rights are dominating national conversation. A new book by Amy Nathan, Round and Round Together: Taking a Merry-Go-Round Ride into the Civil Rights Movement, provides an anatomy of a protest movement as it tells of the ten-year struggle to integrate an amusement park in Baltimore. By placing the story in the context of the Civil Rights Movement, the book shows how individual and group action can bring profound change.

Jim Crow laws and institutionalized racism once barred African-Americans from schools, stores, restaurants, hotels, theaters, parks, public housing, recreation, transportation, and hospitals. Round and Round Together provides a detailed map of the journey from inequality to integration as it played out in one particular venue.

The African-American community in Baltimore began to challenge Jim Crow laws in the 1930s. As the civil rights movement grew, Baltimoreans bolstered their efforts with tactics and strategies learned from protestors nationwide.

By the mid-1950's, Baltimore's whites-only Gwynn Oak Amusement Park had become a focus of civil rights protests. Round and Round Together shows how a carefully-orchestrated combination of picket lines, sit-ins, and mass arrests eventually achieved the goal of integration. On August 28, 1963, the same day Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington, D.C., a little girl in a frilly pink dress became the first African-American to ride the Gwynn Oak carousel, forty miles away. Fittingly, years later, after Gwynn Oak closed, the carousel was moved to the National Mall, where visitors of all races can now enjoy the ride.

This meticulously-researched book features stories, quotes, and images of Civil Rights heroes, from well-known figures, to local people whose actions made a difference. A trailer is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LovkKTVfNc.

Amy Nathan, www.amynathanbooks.com, is the author of nonfiction books for young readers, including Take a Seat—Make a Stand, Yankee Doodle Gals: Women Pilots of World War II, and Count on Us: American Women in the Military. A ten-time winner of the EdPress Award for Excellence in Educational Journalism, she also received a Parents' Choice Award and a Clarion Award for Best Nonfiction. She grew up in Baltimore during the Civil Rights era and lives in New York.

SOURCE Amy Nathan

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