A FLEA FOR JUSTICE

A civil rights activist began her quest for justice as a child.

Growing up in segregated South Carolina, Marian Wright Edelman was admonished for drinking from a fountain meant for white people—an experience that left its mark on the then-4-year-old. Her hero, the abolitionist Sojourner Truth, once responded to a white man’s dismissive remarks (“Why I don’t care any more for your talk than I do for the bite of a flea”) with an equally determined retort (“Perhaps not, but Lord willing, I’ll keep you scratching”). Calling herself a “flea for justice,” Marian fought injustice any way she could: As a child, she switched the signs on segregated water fountains, and while in college, she participated in protests at restaurants that refused to serve African Americans. As the first Black female lawyer in Mississippi, she defended activists arrested for helping African Americans register to vote. She marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and, after he was killed, channeled her efforts into young people’s education, establishing the Children’s Defense Fund and Freedom Schools. Bolling writes in a lively, even playful tone, frequently posing questions to her young audience, returning often to the flea metaphor, and leaving readers with a final challenge: “What will you do to make someone scratch?” Close-ups of faces—Marian’s, Sojourner Truth’s, and King’s, as well as those of the students whom Marian touched—dominate Grooms’ vivid digital art.

A spirited account of a life devoted to service.