New Shoes

 

Title- New Shoes
Author/Retold- Susan Lynn Meyer 
Illustrated by Eric Velasquez 
Genre- Historical Fiction
Grade level- 1st - 4th Grade

The story begins with Ella Mae and her cousin Charlotte in front of a shoe store. They ask each other what shoes that they would get. Ella Mae goes home and she recives the shoes her brother has worn, but they don’t fit well. Her mother says they will have to buy new shoes for her. They go back to the shoe store and see a white girl and her father try on new shoes. After they leave, Ella Mae wants to try on some shoes, but they won’t let “colored people” try on shoes. She has to put her feet on paper and they have to outline her feet. She shoes Charlotte her new shoes and tells her what happened at the store. Charlotte said the same thing happened to her. Ella Mae came up with a new idea. They went to different houses and did odd jobs for a nickel and for outgrown shoes. They take the shoes and polish them and make them almost as good as new. They open up their store Called Ela Mae and Charlotte’s shoes. They let all people try on their shoes.

This is an interesting example of the type of segregation that happened under Jim Crow laws. They degraded black people and did not treat them as regular humans, as seen in the story. They wouldn’t even let them try on shoes. I would use this story to introduce Black History Month, or the topic of segregation in U.S. History. 


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