The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963 Read online

  Dear Reader,

  The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 was my first novel, and its impact has been greater than I ever imagined. Millions of children have enjoyed it. And now … gulp … it’s being made into a television movie!

  When one of my novels is being adapted to another medium, I worry. Some authors say their books are their babies, and that metaphor rings true here; both baby and novel require endless hours of nurturing, and worry, and a team, if they are to flourish. So many things can go wrong in the transition from book to feature film. Would my baby be given proper care?

  My worries disappeared when my family and I arrived on the set, because every member of the cast and crew was dedicated to making this novel come alive. Particularly impressive were the youngest actors, Skai Jackson, Harrison Knight and Bryce Clyde Jenkins. I saw only a few scenes but was surprised by their emotional impact.

  One of my favorite authors, Lois Lowry, has said that if an adaptation of a children’s book to a movie is to succeed, the spirit of the book must be kept alive. I am so happy and honored that the spirit with which I wrote the novel is reflected in the movie.

  September 15, 2013, is the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, the event that inspired The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963. In recognition of the anniversary, the movie will premiere on the Hallmark Channel on September 20, 2013. I am very grateful to the executive producers, Tonya Lewis Lee and Nikki Silver, for sticking with this project for ten years and for handling it with such love and affection.

  Sincerely,

  Christopher Paul Curtis

  Dear Reader,

  I first encountered The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 when I was looking for a book to read to my children that featured a family that closely resembled ours. I read the story to my young son and daughter and we laughed out loud, cried a bit and then had an important conversation about America and some of its difficult past. The characters Christopher Paul Curtis created stayed with me and were so vivid they were practically begging me to bring them to life … on the screen. As a screenwriter, I was excited to give the spirit of Christopher Paul Curtis’s narrative a visual life, especially by capturing the lively family dynamic. I also wanted to give the viewer a sense of what life would have been like in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963 and to show how families tried to protect their children and manage living in the segregated South. It was of great importance to pay homage to the foot soldiers of the Children’s Crusade of Birmingham. They truly showed the world that through nonviolence, when young people stand up together for what they believe in, they can change the world. Finally, it was pivotal that we recognize and acknowledge Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, who perished in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. While that act of terror took their lives and destroyed the lives of many others, their ultimate sacrifice galvanized a nation to make all of America truly equal.

  While it has been fifty years since the events that took place in 1963, it is critical that we remember our history. It is important to understand where we came from to understand our present and to make sure we are moving forward. In many ways we have made great progress, but the march continues, and it is imperative to root out injustice wherever it may be.

  Ultimately, The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, the book and the film, is a story of love … love of family, love of community, love of country even in the face of monsters.

  Thank you, Christopher Paul Curtis, for giving us this beautiful story.

  Very truly yours,

  Tonya Lewis Lee

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 1995 by Christopher Paul Curtis

  Cover art copyright © 2013 by Walden Media, LLC, and ARC Entertainment, LLC.

  Insert photographs copyright © 2013 by Walden Media, LLC, and ARC Entertainment, LLC. Quantrell Colbert: this page, this page, this page; Annette Brown: this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page; Nick Lanzilli: this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page.

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, New York, in 1995.

  Yearling and the jumping horse design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  eISBN: 978-0-385-38295-3

  The American Library Association awarded this book both a Coretta Scott King Honor and a Newbery Honor in 1996. Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-385-38294-6

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1_r2

  This book is dedicated to my parents,

  Dr. Herman and Leslie Lewis Curtis,

  who have given their children both

  roots and wings and encouraged us to soar;

  and to my sister, Cydney Eleanor Curtis,

  who has been unfailingly supportive,

  kind and herself.

  In memory of

  Addie Mae Collins

  Born 4/18/49, died 9/15/63

  Denise McNair

  Born 11/17/51, died 9/15/63

  Carole Robertson

  Born 4/24/49, died 9/15/63

  Cynthia Wesley

  Born 4/30/49, died 9/15/63

  the toll for one day in one city

  Contents

  Cover

  Notes to the Reader

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. And You Wonder Why We Get Called the Weird Watsons

  2. Give, My Regards to Clark, Poindexter

  3. The World’s Greatest Dinosaur War Ever

  4. Froze-Up Southern Folks

  5. Nazi Parachutes Attack America and Get Shot Down over the Flint River by Captain Byron Watson and His Flamethrower of Death

  6. Swedish Cremes and Welfare Cheese

  7. Every Chihuahua in America Lines Up to Take a Bite out of Byron

  8. The Ultra-Glide!

  9. The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963

  10. Tangled Up in God’s Beard

  11. Bobo Brazil Meets the Sheik

  12. That Dog Won’t Hunt No More

  13. I Meet Winnie’s Evil Twin Brother, the Wool Pooh

  14. Every Bird and Bug in Birmingham Stops and Wonders

  15. The World-Famous Watson Pet Hospital

  Epilogue

  Photo Insert

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  I. And You Wonder Why We Get Called the Weird Watsons

  It was one of those super-duper-cold Saturdays. One of those days that when you breathed out your breath kind of hung frozen in the air like a hunk of smoke and you could walk along and look exactly like a train blowing out big, fat, white puffs of smoke.

  It was so cold that if you were stupid enough to go outside your eyes would automatically blink a thousand times all by themselves, probably so the juice inside of them wouldn’t freeze up. It was so cold that if you spit, the slob would be an ice cube before it hit the ground. It was about a zillion degrees bel
ow zero.

  It was even cold inside our house. We put sweaters and hats and scarves and three pairs of socks on and still were cold. The thermostat was turned all the way up and the furnace was banging and sounding like it was about to blow up but it still felt like Jack Frost had moved in with us.

  All of my family sat real close together on the couch under a blanket. Dad said this would generate a little heat but he didn’t have to tell us this, it seemed like the cold automatically made us want to get together and huddle up. My little sister, Joetta, sat in the middle and all you could see were her eyes because she had a scarf wrapped around her head. I was next to her, and on the outside was my mother.

  Momma was the only one who wasn’t born in Flint so the cold was coldest to her. All you could see were her eyes too, and they were shooting bad looks at Dad. She always blamed him for bringing her all the way from Alabama to Michigan, a state she called a giant icebox. Dad was bundled up on the other side of Joey, trying to look at anything but Momma. Next to Dad, sitting with a little space between them, was my older brother, Byron.

  Byron had just turned thirteen so he was officially a teenage juvenile delinquent and didn’t think it was “cool” to touch anybody or let anyone touch him, even if it meant he froze to death. Byron had tucked the blanket between him and Dad down into the cushion of the couch to make sure he couldn’t be touched.

  Dad turned on the TV to try to make us forget how cold we were but all that did was get him in trouble. There was a special news report on Channel 12 telling about how bad the weather was and Dad groaned when the guy said, “If you think it’s cold now, wait until tonight, the temperature is expected to drop into record-low territory, possibly reaching the negative twenties! In fact, we won’t be seeing anything above zero for the next four to five days!” He was smiling when he said this but none of the Watson family thought it was funny. We all looked over at Dad. He just shook his head and pulled the blanket over his eyes.

  Then the guy on TV said, “Here’s a little something we can use to brighten our spirits and give us some hope for the future: The temperature in Atlanta, Georgia, is forecast to reach …” Dad coughed real loud and jumped off the couch to turn the TV off but we all heard the weatherman say, “… the mid-seventies!” The guy might as well have tied Dad to a tree and said, “Ready, aim, fire!”

  “Atlanta!” Momma said. “That’s a hundred and fifty miles from home!”

  “Wilona …,” Dad said.

  “I knew it,” Momma said. “I knew I should have listened to Moses Henderson!”

  “Who?” I asked.

  Dad said, “Oh Lord, not that sorry story. You’ve got to let me tell about what happened with him.”

  Momma said, “There’s not a whole lot to tell, just a story about a young girl who made a bad choice. But if you do tell it, make sure you get all the facts right.”

  We all huddled as close as we could get because we knew Dad was going to try to make us forget about being cold by cutting up. Me and Joey started smiling right away, and Byron tried to look cool and bored.

  “Kids,” Dad said, “I almost wasn’t your father. You guys came real close to having a clown for a daddy named Hambone Henderson.…”

  “Daniel Watson, you stop right there. You’re the one who started that ‘Hambone’ nonsense. Before you started that everyone called him his Christian name, Moses. And he was a respectable boy too, he wasn’t a clown at all.”

  “But the name stuck, didn’t it? Hambone Henderson. Me and your granddaddy called him that because the boy had a head shaped just like a hambone, had more knots and bumps on his head than a dinosaur. So as you guys sit here giving me these dirty looks because it’s a little chilly outside ask yourselves if you’d rather be a little cool or go through life being known as the Hambonettes.”

  Me and Joey cracked up, Byron kind of chuckled and Momma put her hand over her mouth. She did this whenever she was going to give a smile because she had a great big gap between her front teeth. If Momma thought something was funny, first you’d see her trying to keep her lips together to hide the gap, then, if the smile got to be too strong, you’d see the gap for a hot second before Momma’s hand would come up to cover it, then she’d crack up too.

  Laughing only encouraged Dad to cut up more, so when he saw the whole family thinking he was funny he really started putting on a show.

  He stood in front of the TV. “Yup, Hambone Henderson proposed to your mother around the same time I did. Fought dirty too, told your momma a pack of lies about me and when she didn’t believe them he told her a pack of lies about Flint.”

  Dad started talking Southern-style, imitating this Hambone guy. “Wilona, I heard tell about the weather up that far north in Flint, Mitch-again, heard it’s colder than inside a icebox. Seen a movie about it, think it was made in Flint. Movie called Nanook of the North. Yup, do believe for sure it was made in Flint. Uh-huh, Flint, Mitch-again.

  “Folks there live in these things called igloos. According to what I seen in this here movie most the folks in Flint is Chinese. Don’t believe I seen nan one colored person in the whole dang city. You a ’Bama gal, don’t believe you’d be too happy living in no igloo. Ain’t got nothing against ’em, but don’t believe you’d be too happy living ’mongst a whole slew of Chinese folks. Don’t believe you’d like the food. Only thing them Chinese folks in that movie et was whales and seals. Don’t believe you’d like no whale meat. Don’t taste a lick like chicken. Don’t taste like pork at all.”

  Momma pulled her hand away from her mouth. “Daniel Watson, you are one lying man! Only thing you said that was true was that being in Flint is like living in a igloo. I knew I should have listened to Moses. Maybe these babies mighta been born with lumpy heads but at least they’da had warm lumpy heads!

  “You know Birmingham is a good place, and I don’t mean just the weather either. The life is slower, the people are friendlier—”

  “Oh yeah,” Dad interrupted, “they’re a laugh a minute down there. Let’s see, where was that ‘Coloreds Only’ bathroom downtown?”

  “Daniel, you know what I mean, things aren’t perfect but people are more honest about the way they feel”—she took her mean eyes off Dad and put them on Byron—“and folks there do know how to respect their parents.”

  Byron rolled his eyes like he didn’t care. All he did was tuck the blanket farther into the couch’s cushion.

  Dad didn’t like the direction the conversation was going so he called the landlord for the hundredth time. The phone was still busy.

  “That snake in the grass has got his phone off the hook. Well, it’s going to be too cold to stay here tonight, let me call Cydney. She just had that new furnace put in, maybe we can spend the night there.” Aunt Cydney was kind of mean but her house was always warm so we kept our fingers crossed that she was home.

  Everyone, even Byron, cheered when Dad got Aunt Cydney and she told us to hurry over before we froze to death.

  Dad went out to try and get the Brown Bomber started. That was what we called our car. It was a 1948 Plymouth that was dull brown and real big, Byron said it was turd brown. Uncle Bud gave it to Dad when it was thirteen years old and we’d had it for two years. Me and Dad took real good care of it but some of the time it didn’t like to start up in the winter.

  After five minutes Dad came back in huffing and puffing and slapping his arms across his chest.

  “Well, it was touch and go for a while, but the Great Brown One pulled through again!” Everyone cheered, but me and Byron quit cheering and started frowning right away. By the way Dad smiled at us we knew what was coming next. Dad pulled two ice scrapers out of his pocket and said, “O.K., boys, let’s get out there and knock those windows out.”

  We moaned and groaned and put some more coats on and went outside to scrape the car’s windows. I could tell by the way he was pouting that Byron was going to try and get out of doing his share of the work.

  “I’m not going to do your part, Byr
on, you’d better do it and I’m not playing either.”

  “Shut up, punk.”

  I went over to the Brown Bomber’s passenger side and started hacking away at the scab of ice that was all over the windows. I finished Momma’s window and took a break. Scraping ice off of windows when it’s that cold can kill you!

  I didn’t hear any sound coming from the other side of the car so I yelled out, “I’m serious, Byron, I’m not doing that side too, and I’m only going to do half the windshield, I don’t care what you do to me.” The windshield on the Bomber wasn’t like the new 1963 cars, it had a big bar running down the middle of it, dividing it in half.

  “Shut your stupid mouth, I got something more important to do right now.”

  I peeked around the back of the car to see what By was up to. The only thing he’d scraped off was the outside mirror and he was bending down to look at himself in it. He saw me and said, “You know what, square? I must be adopted, there just ain’t no way two folks as ugly as your momma and daddy coulda give birth to someone as sharp as me!”

  He was running his hands over his head like he was brushing his hair.

  I said, “Forget you,” and went back over to the other side of the car to finish the back window. I had half of the ice off when I had to stop again and catch my breath. I heard Byron mumble my name.

  I said, “You think I’m stupid? It’s not going to work this time.” He mumbled my name again. It sounded like his mouth was full of something. I knew this was a trick, I knew this was going to be How to Survive a Blizzard, Part Two.

  How to Survive a Blizzard, Part One had been last night when I was outside playing in the snow and Byron and his running buddy, Buphead, came walking by. Buphead has officially been a juvenile delinquent even longer than Byron.

  “Say, kid,” By had said, “you wanna learn somethin’ that might save your stupid life one day?”

  I should have known better, but I was bored and I think maybe the cold weather was making my brain slow, so I said, “What’s that?”