In 1871, Joshua Loper, a sixteen-year-old black cowboy, records in his journal his experiences while making his first cattle drive under an unsympathetic trail boss.
A black family of five moves into an enormous house once used as a hiding place for runaway slaves. Mysterious sounds and events as well as the discovery of secret passageways make the family believe they are in grave danger.
The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.
Young Cassie Logan endures humiliation and witnesses the racism of the KKK as they embark on a cross-burning rampage, before she fully understands the importance her family attributes to having land of their own.
Dinner at Aunt Connie's is even more special than usual when Melody meets not only her new adopted cousin but twelve inspiring African-American women, who step out of their portraits and join the family for dinner.
Emancipated by their owner's will, thirteen-year-old Evie and her father struggle to gain Mama's freedom and to make a home for themselves in the pre-Civil War South.
A 12-year-old "mixed" child feels out of place in her community and struggles to unearth her past and her family history as she discovers more about her missing father.
On a visit to her grandmother Ola, who is dying of cancer in her house in the desert, fourteen-year-old Emmie hears many stories about the past and her family history and comes to a better understanding of relatives both dead and living.
After meeting at their private school in New York, fifteen-year-old Jeremiah, who is black and whose parents are separated, and Ellie, who is white and whose mother has twice abandoned her, fall in love and then try to cope with people's reactions.
Jenny loses most of her friends and suffers the verbal abuse of classmates when she befriends a black girl who has moved with her family into Jenny's duplex and shares her interest in horses.