When Kathya Alexander talks to young people about the struggle for civil rights in the U.S., she says she’s often alarmed by what they tell her.

“If they know anything, they know that Rosa Parks sat on a bus – but they have no idea why. They know that Martin Luther King made a speech – but they have no idea why,” says Kathya, an accomplished playwright and former Solid Ground Housing Specialist. “And after that, they just think Black people got freedom.” 

In her debut novel, “Keep A’Livin’,” Kathya seeks to reconnect those textbook milestones of the Civil Rights Era with the lives of ordinary people who shaped – and whose lives were shaped by – the everyday fight for equality in the 1950s and ‘60s. It follows a young Black girl in Arkansas, Mandy Anderson, as she questions and then challenges the structural racism that defines her growing world. 

“Keep A’Livin’” is a work of fiction that’s based on real events – in history and in the life of the author. Like her protagonist, Kathya grew up in Arkansas of the 1950s and ‘60s and experienced much of the same raw racism and discrimination that Mandy and her brother rebel against in the book. And like Mandy, Kathya was among the first Black students to attend a previously all-white school (in Jacksonville, in Kathya’s case) after schools were ordered to desegregate.  

“The Civil Rights Act made a real difference in my life,” Kathya says. “Immediately, there were things that I couldn’t do the day before that the day after all of a sudden I could do.” 

Earlier this month, Kathya stopped by Solid Ground’s Sand Point Housing to read from her book and share her own experiences at our annual Juneteenth celebration for residents and staff. It was something of a return visit for Kathya, who a decade ago led writing exercises for Sand Point youth that culminated in a book of poetry and art, titled “Compared to What?”  

Though she has written more than a dozen plays, many of them award winning, “Keep A’Livin’” is Kathya’s first novel and was the result of two decades of halting work. She said she started out trying to explore and understand her childhood and family, and only later applied the book ends of the Civil Rights Era to frame the story. 

Making the Civil Rights movement real for younger readers 

In a way, the framing comes naturally. Born in 1953, Kathya has a clear memory of the summer in 1964 when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act prohibiting discrimination in public places. For 11-year-old Kathya, the most important part of the new law was what it meant for the city’s larger swimming pool, which up until that day had been reserved for white residents only. 

“Truly, my goal with this book is to educate. I think it’s really interesting that after trying to get it published for 20 years, the book finally comes out now at this really critical time in America.” 

~Kathya Alexander, author

“They thought that having a Black person in the swimming pool was disgusting and dirty and almost poisonous, so if you just went and dipped your toe into a swimming pool that was all white, they would literally drain the whole pool and put in all new water,” Kathya says. “So I remember that day just being riveted to the TV, like ‘Oh, my gosh, they’re not draining the pool. They’re letting these little Black girls actually get into the pool and swim.’ And it was the most amazing thing to me.” 

In her Juneteenth appearance at Sand Point, Kathya read a passage from “Keep A’Livin’” in which Mandy and her friends sign themselves up to attend a formerly all-white school and struggle against the discrimination they find there.  

With the nightly news broadcasting stories about Black children facing physical violence at newly integrated schools in other parts of the country, Mandy and her friends know their parents wouldn’t let them go to what they called “the white school,” so they forge their parents’ signatures on forms saying they wanted to transfer. 

An exceptionally smart student, Mandy has few problems with teachers at her new school until she tries to get involved in an upcoming play – something she always excelled at in her old school – and is shut out along with the other Black students. In response, Mandy leads a demonstration outside the school and later organizes a separate talent show for the Black students, which ends up being more popular than the play. 

A story for this time

The story of the forged signatures and the talent show are pulled directly from a chapter in Kathya’s own life, albeit with some exaggeration. She really did forge her mother’s signature to enroll in an all-white school, and she did take part in a Black student talent show that continued to be held every year long after she graduated.

“Keep A’Livin’” ends in 1968 with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but the story feels remarkably pertinent more than a half century later – at a time when Juneteenth is a national holiday, but some states have prohibited public school teachers from telling their students why. 

“Truly, my goal with this book is to educate,” Kathya said after her reading at Sand Point. “I think it’s really interesting that after trying to get it published for 20 years, the book finally comes out now, at this really critical time in America. It does end up being an opportunity for us to have a discussion, just like the one we had today.” 

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All photos by Rachael Green.