Fredrick Lemuel "Fred" McKissack, Sr. (August 12, 1939 – April 28, 2013) was an
African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...
writer, best known for collaboration with his wife,
Patricia C. McKissack
Patricia C. "Pat" McKissack (''née'' Carwell; August 9, 1944 – April 7, 2017) was a prolific African American children's writer. She was the author of over 100 books, including Dear America books ''A Picture of Freedom, A Picture of Freedom: ...
on more than 100 children's books about the history of African Americans.
The McKissacks jointly received the biennial American Library Association Coretta Scott King – Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2014 (after Fredrick's death).
Biography
McKissack was born in 1939 to a prominent family of African-American architects in
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the List of muni ...
—
McKissack & McKissack
McKissack & McKissack is an American architecture, engineering, program management and construction firm based in Washington, D.C. It is the oldest minority-owned architecture and construction company in the United States.
The firm was founde ...
, "widely regarded as the oldest African-American-owned architectural and construction firm in the United States". After high school, McKissack joined the United States Marines, before earning a degree in civil engineering from
Tennessee State University
Tennessee State University (Tennessee State, Tenn State, or TSU) is a public historically black land-grant university in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1912, it is the only state-funded historically black university in Tenness ...
. He was active in the
Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
of the 1960s, participating in sit-ins to end segregation.
In 1964, McKissack and Patricia Leanna Carwell married, eventually having three children. In the early 1980s, the couple began writing children's books together, focusing on African-American history, which they felt was underrepresented in children's literature. "In those days there were so few books for and about the African-American child ... Black kids needed to see themselves in books."
Patricia had been a teacher and an editor of religious books. She did most of the writing while Fredrick focused on research. She said later, "He was gone most of the time. He was always into an interview trying to scrounge out some little piece of information."
McKissack was survived by three brothers and five grandchildren as well as the couple's three sons: Frederick L. McKissack, Jr., and twins Robert and John.
Selected works
The seven books below, marked with a double asterisk, were written by Fredrick and Patricia McKissack and are among the 10 works by Fredrick McKissack most widely held in
WorldCat
WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCL ...
participating libraries. (Three are among her 10 most widely held works.)
* ''The Civil Rights Movement in America from 1865 to the Present''** (1987)
* ''A Long Hard Journey: The Story of the Pullman Porter''** (1989) – winner of the
Coretta Scott King Award
The Coretta Scott King Award is an annual award presented by the Ethnic & Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table, part of the American Library Association (ALA). Named for Coretta Scott King, wife of Martin Luther King Jr., this award rec ...
for writers
* ''
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth (; born Isabella Baumfree; November 26, 1883) was an American abolitionist of New York Dutch heritage and a women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to f ...
Young, Black, and Determined
''Young, Black, and Determined: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry'' is a 1998 book by Patricia and Fredrick McKissack. It is a biography of the playwright and activist, Lorraine Hansberry.
Reception
A review of ''Young, Black, and Determined'' by ...