For Cara Reese, an English and humanities teacher, the publication of her richly illustrated children’s book, Dr. King Goes to India! A Cool Kids’ Guide, comes at a fraught time for the presentation and portrayal of history. It is not lost on the Atlanta resident that she lives in a state that is actively banning books and removing them from shelves. “History is important to understanding where we are and where we’ve been,” she says. “I’m distressed that it is being lumped in with political conversations.”

She finds it ironic that her hometown itself has a rich legacy of momentous civil rights history. “Atlanta is an endlessly fascinating place,” she says. “All roads lead to Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement. I live in the heart of the city. We [can] walk to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birth home. I am minutes away from his father’s original church. A lot of streets are named after civil rights icons. I would run into John Lewis at the grocery store.”

Reese was not yet born in 1968 when CBS aired a revelatory prime-time special titled “Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed,” but recent concerted efforts to erase the contributions of Black Americans from the national record are disconcerting.

As a writer, she says, her passion and calling is to unearth lesser-known stories of towering figures such as King. Growing up in Texas, where she remembers having “Black History Week,” she got “the abridged version” of King’s life: He fought segregation, he gave the “I Have a Dream” speech, he died.

While doing research at the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, she read about how he and his wife, Coretta, went on a monthlong trip to India. “I had never heard about this trip or seen pictures of Dr. King abroad,” she says. “I came to realize this man was an internationalist, an intersectionalist, and interfaith, interested in where ideologies meet. Dr. King is not just [part of] American history. Throughout the world you will find monuments to Dr. King, movements that he inspired. He was [personally] inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, a champion of nonviolent resistance in India’s struggle for independence from British rule.”

Dr. King Goes to India! chronicles this little-known trip in what Kirkus Reviews praises as “a beautifully designed, poetic historical picture book…offers an uplifting look at two nations striving for a better future.” Reese’s poetic text establishes the connection between King and Gandhi:

From half a world away, in Montgomery, Alabama, Dr. King was inspired by Gandhi’s teachings, by the endless patience required. From half a world away, in Montgomery, Alabama, India’s struggles reminded Martin of southern segregation.

Throughout the book, Reese includes quotes by Gandhi (“Nonviolence is a weapon of the strong”) and King (“To other countries I may go as a tourist but to India I come as a pilgrim”) to underscore their kindred missions of freedom.

Reese herself did the book’s illustrations. “Reese’s design work floods the pages with colors and patterns, always complementing the text without overpowering it,” Kirkuspraises.

“I grew up going to museums,” she says. “Reading, writing, history, and art—I love all these things to my core. My books presented me with an opportunity to try my hand at the visual aspect. I wanted the illustrations to be bold, bright, and immersive for children.”

Teaching and writing are shared first loves, Reese says. “I was a bookworm as a child. I was the kind of kid who would get out of PE and go to the locker room and read a book. My grandmother edited the first African American textbook for the St. Louis public school system. That was transformative for me to learn how one can put…form to African American history and disseminate it in the curriculum.”

Reese attended the University of Texas at Austin and earned her degree in humanities. She began her career as a researcher. While she went on to receive her masters in developmental psychology, she considered herself a humanities educator at heart. “I am interested in teaching history to children in a developmentally appropriate way.”

A formative experience for Reese was her first dive into historical research at UT Austin for social and cultural historian John Hoberman. “He was writing a fascinating book on race and sports,” she says. “This was [in] the days of microfiche, and I would get lost in the library, looking at images and stories, and I became aware of so many interesting but untold stories that were languishing in libraries.”

Once Reese shifted her focus to education, she attended teachers college and studied about the craft of children’s books. Her first book was Black Artists Rock! (2022), which profiles pivotal Black artists in music, literature, theater, and film, from Maya Angelou and Duke Ellington to less-familiar names, such as painter Faith Ringgold and photographer James Van Der Zee. “One of the most gratifying parts of this journey is my partnership with an art gallery that chose my book to create a fine arts installation,” she says. She has written Volume 2.

While there is certainly no dearth of material written about King, Reese believes this lesser-known story about his visit to India does more than introduce him to a new generation. “Representation matters so much,” she says. “Some children have never seen images of African Americans traveling abroad, and definitely not in the 1950s and ’60s traveling abroad and being welcomed. I want Black children to spread their wings and feel they have a place in this world, and to understand that African American culture is absolutely in conversation with the globe. That has always been the case.”

She has been pleased with the reception to her books when she’s done readings of them for schoolchildren. “Children learn best when they are actively engaged and making a personal connection,” she says. When presenting Black Artists Rock!, she shares music by Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. At a recent reading of Dr. King Goes to India!, she engaged children with an art project that asked them to create postcards to be sent to India.

Reese teaches middle school and high school electives at the Westminster Schools for grades K–12. “My professional and writing lives are interconnected,” she says. “My hope was and continues to be to add to the representation of African Americans in picture books and to inspire children to be curious about other cultures.”

Her next book, for example, was inspired by her discovery while doing research that there is a history of surfing in precolonial West Africa. “My parents were afraid of the water,” she says. “I found a story about African Americans being dissuaded from water skills, which is a life skill. When I started to dig in, I found that not only had Africans been swimming, they had been surfing since the 1800s. I want kids and adults to hear this story.”

Donald Liebenson is a Chicago-based writer who is published on vanityfair.com and in the Washington Post and other outlets.