Set in the 1950's in the segregated South, a young boy tells how he accompanied his grandfather on the day when - as an African American - he was finally entitled to vote. His grandfather urges him to be patient when he frets at having to wait in line outside the polling station. But what should have been an historic occasion, captured in the boy's photograph of his grandfather proudly displaying a ballot paper, turns into one of humiliation when a racist official rips up the voting slip after the old man fails a literacy test deemed to be a necessary qualification. The memory stays with the boy and when he is of an age to vote for the first time, he does so in tribute to his late grandfather. The powerful watercolour illustrations by James E. Ransome convey the range of emotions that run through the story, capturing the nuances of facial expression and much period detail. An afterword gives historical information about voting rights and the various attempts to deny them prior to the 1965 legislation.