One notable illustration shows blacks and whites marching together in protest the perspective moves farther and farther out, until the reader can see a mass of people all marching for the same cause, with skin tone largely indistinguishable. The artwork, too, is in black and white, delineating the social and political boundaries of the time and place. We see the story from two viewpoints: that of the Longs in their racist neighborhood and that of the Thompsons in "The Bottoms", an all-black neighborhood. In this environment, it's risky for the Longs to reach out to the girl's family, the Thompsons, but the two families fight segregation together. The neighborhood kids and their parents drop racial slurs casually, and Mark's father's boss threatens to fire him if he doesn't fall into line when it comes to his reporting of the next big story: a little black girl riding her bike who is run off the road by white men in a truck. The racially-charged story is especially tense in the suburbs of Houston, where Mark's family has recently moved. Mark Long's father is a reporter covering the story of black students from the SNCC accused of the attempted murder of a white policeman. Semi-autobiographical account of two families - one black, one white - navigating civil rights in 1967 Texas.
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