Sentenced to Death at Thirteen is a sweeping saga of survival, migration, and unbreakable spirit. Spanning more than a century, it traces one African American family's journey from the brutal legacy of slavery and the racial terror of the Jim Crow South to the innovative design tables of America's aerospace industry-and beyond.
Rooted in oral family storytelling and historical research, this powerful narrative reveals how a single moment in 1916-a thirteen-year-old Black boy's innocent greeting to a White girl-set off a chain of events that forced him to run for his life. That brief interaction ignited a migration that would carry him and his descendants across states, through decades, and into worlds beyond his imagination.
From terror to safety, from exclusion to achievement, and from the cotton fields to contributing as a design engineer on the Space Shuttle program-this story chronicles the extraordinary resilience that propelled a family-and a nation's promise-through the most turbulent chapters of American history.
M. Lisa Scinto is also the author of two forthcoming works: Our Gifts to the World, which explores overlooked African American contributions and inventions, and Gifts from Enemies, an examination of the origins and lasting impact of colorism in the United States.
