My Mother the Cheerleader by Robert Sharenow

Main Character:
Location: New Orleans, Louisiana
Time period: 1960
Genre: YA Fiction, Historical, Civil Rights Movement

Not what you might expect from the title. Set in New Orleans in 1960, the "Cheerleaders" of the title were the women who would go down to yell all sorts of abuse at Ruby Bridges as she would go in to the elementary school. When a visitor from New York comes down and stays in the boarding house owned by Louise and her mother, events are set in motion that culminate in a night of terrifying, brutal violence.