The new exhibit at Philly’s Historic Germantown looks at race and class through the groundbreaking 1946 children’s book ‘Bright April’

Becky Birtha, a poet and author who has written three children’s books herself, has a lot in common with the young girl who is the main character in the book Bright April.

Like April, Birtha is Black, grew up in Germantown, was a member of a Brownie troop, wore her hair in two pigtails, and had a father who worked for the U.S. Postal Service.

The book, by former Philadelphia resident Marguerite de Angeli, about a 9-year-old girl named April Bright, is considered a classic among children’s literature of the 20th century. It tells the story of a Black girl who experiences racial prejudice for the first time.

April’s awareness that racism is about limiting the goals, aspirations, and opportunities for Black people occurs during a meeting of her integrated Brownie Scout meeting.

A white girl in the Brownie troop laughs at April for saying she wants to grow up to become a hat designer and the “big boss” of a major department store on Chestnut Street. April runs home and sobs in her mother’s arms and asks: ”Mamma, is it true there are some places we can’t go?”

While Bright April has the format of a children’s book because of how its author wanted to display her drawings, it is actually an 87-page novel for middle school-age students, Birtha said.

It also conveys April’s older brother’s concerns about job opportunities when he returns home from serving as a soldier in World War II. April learns about her brother’s worries, but does not fully understand them, through the letters he writes home.

Birtha, now 74 and living in Lansdowne, said that she was struck by the way April’s fictional parents explained racial prejudice

“In a way, April’s parents did more in explaining things to her than my parents did for me,” Birtha said.

“When I was in the third grade, I had a teacher with racist attitudes who was working with Black students for the first time. She didn’t want to believe the Black children could perform as well as white students,” she said.

“I was an excellent reader, but she wouldn’t put me in the top readers group, and I would draw things, but she wouldn’t post them on the bulletin board.”

Birtha’s parents met with the teacher and eventually Birtha was transferred to another classroom. But Birtha said her parents never discussed racial prejudice with her in that situation.

“My parents never explained to me what was going on. I always felt like I wasn’t good enough. And somehow, I could never please Ms. Peters.”

April’s mother, on the other hand, pointed out that because of April’s skin color, there were some people who thought that she could not have any career she wanted.

The story of how Marguerite de Angeli, the white author and illustrator of Bright April, portrayed both racial prejudice and interracial understanding is the subject of a new exhibit, Inspiring Bright April: Race and Class in 1940s Germantown, that opened May 13 at Historic Germantown.

First published in 1946, the book, about a 9-year-old Black girl about to turn 10, was the first mainstream children’s book about a Black child experiencing racial prejudice written by a white author, said Barbara Dowdall, one of the exhibit’s curators.

“[De Angeli] first proposed writing about a Black child in 1940, but her publishing company thought that would be too controversial.”

Dowdall said the idea leading to the exhibit at the Germantown Historical Society began in 2021, the year of the book’s 75th anniversary.

Through conversations with Susan Bockius, the co-curator who knew de Angeli after the author moved to Green Lane, a borough in Montgomery County, and Lynn Washington, who once operated a bookstore in Germantown, the plans for a 75th anniversary observation changed into the broader, current exhibit.

In the book, April attends an integrated school that was patterned after the old Joseph E. Hill Elementary School in Germantown. In reality, the Hill school, which has since been demolished, was a segregated school for Black students in the 1940s.

Dowdall said that in de Angeli’s 1971 memoir, Butter at the Old Price, the author wrote about reaching out to interview Black teachers, educators, and other professionals she met in Germantown, including the real-life principal of the segregated Joseph E. Hill School, Nellie Rathbone Bright, and the real-life Jessica Cole, the Black leader of Girl Scout Troop 338, to understand Black families and culture.

De Angeli dedicated Bright April “to Nellie, to Jessica and to Griz, with grateful appreciation.” Griz was later identified as Gertrude E. Gold, who was executive director of the Girl Scouts Council in Philadelphia.

In her memoir, de Angeli, who once lived on Carpenter Lane when it was considered Germantown, recounted one discussion with Nellie Bright.

Bright told de Angeli that as a child, she told a teacher she wanted to teach at a women’s college.

“The teacher replied, ‘Don’t you know you can’t do that?’ We wept together,” de Angeli wrote. “This was new to my experience and heartbreaking.”

In today’s world, some might criticize Bright April for a message that suggests Black people must be perfect to be accepted by white people. The book points out that April’s family keeps their house clean and neat, but down the block, some houses look unkempt.

When the book came out, its discussions about race were considered quite radical and revolutionary, Birtha said.

Dowdall noted that de Angeli had written several other books about families from Amish, Quaker, and Polish backgrounds.

“She first proposed writing about a Black child in 1940, but her publishing company thought that would be too controversial,” Dowdall said. The book was finally published in 1946.

The Historic Germantown exhibit includes a drawing desk that de Angeli once used.

Bockius refurbished the desk and donated it to the historical society. There are also pictures of Nellie Bright, along with photos of some of the Black luminaries whose pictures Bright hung on her classroom walls as a teacher: Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, and Paul Laurence Dunbar.

There is a children’s room with a Brownie uniform from the 1940s, a pupil’s school desk, and a list of questions parents or teachers might use to discuss issues of race with children. One question asks children whether their parents have had “the talk” — explaining racism to Black children — with them.

The exhibit’s introductory film includes excerpts from a PBS interview of Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, who said Bright April was her favorite book as a child and had inspired her passion for reading.

Birtha said one of the most exciting things about reading Bright April when she was a child was recognizing the places mentioned in the book.

Birtha’s mother, Jessie Birtha, once worked as a librarian at the Vernon Park library, which is now the Center in the Park, and Wissahickon Valley Park, where the Brownie Scouts go to identify trees and birds.

April’s teacher talks about the Battle of Germantown during the Revolutionary War and how George Washington walked the streets of the village.

“When I was a child, I had a lot of pride about living in Germantown, and it being a historic area,” Birtha said. “I don’t think I realized how unusual it was to have a book that takes place [where you live] and to be able to recognize all the historic landmarks and places.”

“Inspiring Bright April” runs through Dec. 31 and is free and open to the public at Historic Germantown, 5501 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia. The hours are 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Tuesdays, and 1 to 5 p.m. on Thursdays. For more information, call 215-844-1683.