Set in rural Mississippi during the Great Depression, its title is taken from a code phrase--itself a reference to the spiritual "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"--used by slaves to warn each other of impending danger. Twelve-year-old Abraham Lincoln "Short'ning Bread" Jackson is trying to bring his father, Rufus, home from a chain gang, where the man has been serving time for a crime he did not commit. Short'ning Bread goes to great lengths to help his father, but ultimately the family has to face the fact that in the South in the 1930s the deck is stacked against them. Despite the help of a white postmaster who helps to free Rufus, the Jacksons are forced to head north to Chicago. A commentator in
Kirkus Reviews concluded that "Robinet's . . . character, Short'ning, is ingenious and endearing."
Like several of her other books, Robinet's If You Please, President Lincoln offers not merely a story, but an education in U.S. history. The book involves an actual but little-known scheme to deport freed slaves--whom white workers feared would present dangerous competition for jobs--to Haiti in the Caribbean.
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