Hattie Jacobs dreams of becoming a teacher. But her parents were formerly enslaved and are struggling to survive in Nashville after Reconstruction. So the Jacobs family joins the Great Exodus of 1879 to Kansas. Will what is waiting for them in Kansas live up to their dreams?
Hattie Jacobs has a secret dream: to go to school to become a teacher. But her parents were formerly enslaved and are struggling to survive in Nashville, Tennessee, after Reconstruction. When the Jacobs family joins the Great Exodus of 1879 to Kansas, their journey in search of a better life is filled with danger and hardship. Will they make it to the Mississippi River unharmed? What will be waiting for them in Kansas, and will it live up to their dreams? It’s the storytellers who preserve a nation’s history. But what happens when some stories are silenced? The I Am America series features fictional stories based on important historical events from people whose voices have been underrepresented, lost, or forgotten over time. AGES: 8 to 12 AUTHOR: Allison Lassieur once lived in Tennessee and traveled the path Hattie and her family might have followed from Nashville to the banks of the Mississippi River near Memphis. Today she lives in upstate New York and shares a 110-year-old house with her husband, her daughter, three dogs, two cats, and more history books than she can count.