[2][3] The McKissacks jointly received the biennial American Library Association Coretta Scott King – Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2014 (after Fredrick's death).
[4] McKissack was born in 1939 to a prominent family of African-American architects in Nashville, Tennessee—McKissack & McKissack, "widely regarded as the oldest African-American-owned architectural and construction firm in the United States".
[2] He was active in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, participating in sit-ins to end segregation.
[2] In 1964, McKissack and Patricia Leanna Carwell married, eventually having three children.
‡ Besides the two Coretta Scott King Award winners, four collaborations by the husband-and-wife team were runners-up, or Coretta Scott King Honor Books (in the writers category).