The first part of the novel focuses on Kenny's struggles to make friends as a smart and thoughtful ten-year-old, then shifts in setting when his parents decide to deliver their oldest son, Byron, to live with his grandmother in Birmingham, Alabama.
The family embarks on a road trip to the Deep South, and while visiting Alabama, they get caught up in a tragic historical event of the Civil Rights Movement.
[1] In an interview, Curtis stated that his son read him Dudley Randall's "The Ballad of Birmingham" while he was working on the book, and the poem inspired him to change the setting of his novel to focus on a pivotal moment of civil rights history instead.
As soon as the school year concludes, the Watsons ready their car ("the Brown Bomber") and embark on a road trip from Flint to Birmingham to deliver Byron and visit Grandma Sands.
Grandma Sands warns the children to avoid a local swimming hole because of a dangerous whirlpool, which Kenny mishears as "Wool Pooh" due to her thick Alabama accent.
After his panicked parents rush to the scene, Kenny wanders over to the smoldering church building in a daze and is convinced that he sees the Wool Pooh again, lurking in the smoke and clinging to what he thinks is Joetta's torn shoe.
Professor Rachelle Kuehl posits that The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963 expands beyond the typical historical fiction genre by contextualizing the events of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and providing readers the opportunity to learn about social injustice.
[5] The climax of the story centers around the historic 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham in 1963, soon after the civil rights protests had resulted in successful negotiations with white city leaders for integration.
Professor Jonda C. McNair asserts that humor serves as an important literary device in The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 to expose the racism experienced by African Americans in the 1960s.
[7] More specifically, she finds that the novel uses four categories of race-related humor to reveal racial oppression in a subtle manner: exaggeration, sarcasm, the anticipation of racism, and mocking white people.
[8] For example, Daniel jokes about how the Watson family cannot just stop at any establishment during its road trip to Birmingham; these comments, though communicated in a humorous manner, point to the discrimination faced by African Americans in the South.
[17] It was directed by Kenny Leon and starred Anika Noni Rose, Wood Harris, Latanya Richardson, Skai Jackson, and David Alan Grier.
[citation needed] Walden Media also collaborated with the Southern Poverty Law Center to develop educational materials that would help teachers in Alabama teach their students about the Civil Rights Movement through the film.