How one mother prepared her children to become Selma's foot soldiers.
In 1965 Selma, Alabama, Carrie Louise Lundy made a decision that still takes one's breath away. A single mother raising nine children while working as a nurse and midwife, she chose not to shield her children from the civil rights movement unfolding three blocks from their home at 1421 Sylvan Street. Instead, she prepared them for it - building courage through radical trust and high expectations, raising children brave enough to march when the moment came.
Carrie's Children fills a critical gap in civil rights literature. Extensive documentation exists of adult leadership and strategic planning - but precious little captures the children who participated, or the family dynamics that enabled them. This is the story history books miss: the mothers and communities who prepared children to become part of history itself.
At twelve, author Clarence T. Jones attended mass civil rights meetings led by John Lewis, Hosea Williams, and James Bevel, participated in sit-ins, and crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday - March 7, 1965. His uncle, Sylvester "DeeDee" Lundy, appears prominently on the March 19, 1965 cover of Time Magazine, standing alongside John Lewis on the front lines of the Selma to Montgomery March - a connection the family discovered only upon seeing the magazine.
But this isn't just another civil rights memoir. It is an eyewitness account that reveals the hidden mechanics of courage - the daily preparation behind dramatic moments, the Catholic education that formed young activists at Saint Elizabeth School, and the community networks of neighbors, teachers, and friends that sustained children and parents through circumstances that should have broken them.
Written with an engineer's precision and a technical writer's clarity, Carrie's Children is primary source history and intimate family memoir in equal measure. It is the story of hidden heroes - ordinary people whose extraordinary preparation made the movement possible.
Daily courage. The story behind the history.
Perfect for readers of civil rights history, American memoir, and narrative nonfiction. Essential reading for educators, historians, book clubs, and anyone who has ever asked: who raised the foot soldiers?
