A foreword describes how Marie Bolden became the first Black finalist in a national spelling bee in 1908; the next was MacNolia Cox, in 1936. Eighth grader MacNolia first won her school spelling bee in Akron, Ohio, and then advanced to win the city’s spelling bee. After that, she was off to Washington, D.C., for the National Spelling Bee, but not before being celebrated all over Akron. “A crowd of thousands” and a military band sent her off at the train station. As the train crossed into Maryland, she was forced to move from an integrated train car to a segregated one. And in D.C., she stayed with a local Black doctor, because she wasn’t allowed at the contestants’ whites-only hotel. She and her mother had to take the stairs—not the elevator—to the spelling bee banquet, and during the competition, MacNolia and the only other Black contestant, Elizabeth Kenney, had to sit at a table apart from the white participants. MacNolia made it to the top five before she misspelled “nemesis”—a word that wasn’t on the official list, triggering a protest dismissed by the judges. MacNolia was out of the contest but not before making history, despite the unfair treatment she received. (Ages 6-9)