Perspectives S33/Ep57 Black Was the Ink by Michelle Jones Coles

After a harrowing interaction with police a a local D.C. park, Malcolm, 16, is angry and despondent and feels like nothing good ever happens for teens like him. The growing violence in his neighborhood leads his mother to send him to their family farm in Mississippi. What happens next is a fantastical journey through time to Reconstruction America. Black Was the Ink is the debut novel by Michelle Jones Coles, a civil rights attorney and mother of four sons. As a 9th generation Louisianan, she is highly attuned to the struggles African Americans have faced in overcoming the legacy of slavery and the periods of government-sanctioned discrimination that followed. This novel is best suited for readers 13 and older.