Where It All Goes Down
1960s Oakland, California
We know you tune your grandpa out when he rambles on about how times were different in his day, but you should listen sometime. Things were really different back in the 1960s, especially when it comes to race. One Crazy Summer is set in this turbulent time, smack dab in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement.
The Civil Rights Movement was huge. This is a time when people like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Irene Morgan were making moves and taking stands (or seats, in Morgan's case) to demand equal rights for black Americans.
For the sake of this book, what's most important to understand is that this was a time of great racial disparity in the United States and experiences varied widely based on where you lived. When Delphine arrives in Oakland from New York City, she's surprised by how different stuff is on either end of the country. Sure, racism is everywhere, but the way people deal with racist attitudes differs. She's in the city that birthed the Black Panther Party now.