TWO AMERICAS, ONE STORY: THIS NEUTRAL, FACT-BASED HISTORY follows Black and White perspectives from the 1400s to today, built for understanding, not blame. This story of race and rights in America opens with Rosa Parks' small rebellion in 1955, then steps back to the 1400s to trace how the fates of two peoples became entangled long before that Montgomery bus ride. From the Three-Fifths Compromise through the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement, to today's headlines on voting rights and DEI, the book follows ONE THROUGHLINE: how laws and choices shaped (and still shape) Black and White American lives. Each chapter pairs NARRATIVE HISTORY with the people who lived it -- Claudette Colvin, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Thurgood Marshall, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, George Washington Carver -- and defines the terms that matter in-line, from manumission to redlining to gerrymandering. And every chapter closes with a TIMELINE OF KEY DATES and WANT TO LEARN MORE? reading list for students ready to go deeper. Written for grades 7- 9, author Phyllis Haensel doesn't tell readers what to think. She gives them the HISTORY and the TOOLS to THINK FOR THEMSELVES.