“Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.” Dr. Martin King Jr., a activist who stood up for black peoples’ rights, said this during his “I Have a Dream” speech. During the Civil Rights Movement, society changed as a whole. This happened to the Watsons throughout the novel, “The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963” By Christopher Paul Curtis, a historical fiction novel that parallels to the Civil Rights Movement. This book is about a black family who travels from Flint, Michigan to Birmingham, Alabama during the time of the Civil Rights Movement. This novel is an allegorical novel because it parallels to events happening in 1963 during the Civil Rights Movement. Just like society, the Watsons were not aware of how racism and segregation was a problem in the South. The Watsons are exposed to racism when the 16th Baptist Church was bombed. Society realized that they should take action to get rid of segregation. At the very end of the Watsons, Byron changes from a bully to a caring and responsible person. When the Jim Crow laws and segregation was extinguished, society, as a whole, changed just like how the Watsons changed. During society in the 1960s, many people were facing their own problems, so they were …show more content…
The author, Christopher Paul Curtis, included the church bombing in order to show how serious and scary this event was. By reading the Watsons, one learns and can infer that life for African-Americans in the 1960s was unfair. The author wrote a book about a black family during the Civil Rights Movement to give us a perspective on how life was in the 1960s. The author’s purpose is to educate people that segregation is serious and we shouldn’t ever make these mistakes that people in the 1960s did. Perhaps if people didn’t judge others by skin color, all the people who died for the movement would still be