7 Steps

1. Find a subject.  I found history in my backyard. I live just 12 miles from downtown Greensboro.

2. Research the topic, using primary and secondary sources.

3. Write the story.

4. Create a main character that young readers can identify with. 8-year-old Connie

5. Choose a motivation for the protagonist that will drive the plot. Connie longs for a banana split at the downtown lunch counter that bars blacks.

6. Let her family be both invested and involved in the Civil Rights Movement.

7. Weave the fictional story and actual historical events into historical fiction.

Websites

    Greensboro Sit-ins: Launch of a Civil Rights Movement

Newspapers

    Accounts of the sit-ins (from 1960)

    Later articles

Oral histories of key players and eyewitnesses (audio)

Archival photographs – online digital collections

    Greensboro Sit-ins: Launch of a Civil Rights Movement Photo Gallery

    Signs Enforcing Discrimination (Library of Congress)

Video documentaries of the Civil Rights Movement

    Eyes on the Prize (PBS)

    February One (independent film)

Personal Experience

    Memories of 1960s

        Downtown shopping trips

        Woolworth's and other five-and-dime stores

        Lunch counters

        Sears catalog

        TV coverage of civil rights protests

        Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

     Museum exhibits – Greensboro Historical Museum, Smithsonian Institution

     Site visits –Former Woolworth’s store, North Carolina A&T State University