CAMBRIDGE — Dion Banks has always been there for Pine Street. So it was not surprising that Pine Street turned out for Dion Banks.

In the basement of the Bethel AME church, surrounded by silver balloons and a long author’s table stacked with books to sign, Banks — a longtime political activist, historian and now first-time children’s book author — recently surveyed a who’s who of his entire Dorchester County upbringing.

There was William Jarmon, a longtime friend and mentor who worked with Banks to establish Harriet Tubman-focused walking tours for teens so they would understand their history. Next to him sat Duane Farrow, a truck driver, part-time DJ and schoolmate of Banks who fondly remembers the two boys cutting it up in the basement of Bethel AME after Sunday school. And next to him was Janeen Ford, who used to live two doors down from Banks’ grandmother, and said she always knew good things were in store for the precocious reader.

The occasion was the release of “Kofi the Wind Whisperer: A Hero’s Fight to Freedom,” a children’s book Banks released in May to rave reviews on Amazon. The story features an enslaved young man who discovers he can harness the wind to free himself and others from brutal enslavement.

The story clearly takes inspiration from the landscape of Dorchester County, but Banks said he also was inspired by the writing of Octavia Butler and the activism of Gloria Richardson, who stared down Robert Kennedy while fighting for civil rights for Black Cambridge residents in the early 1960s. Richardson got the attorney general to sign the 1963 Treaty of Cambridge, a landmark agreement between the city’s residents and the federal government to end segregation in public schools, housing and accommodations in Cambridge.

Four years later, tensions in Cambridge came to a boil as the Ku Klux Klan and H. Rap Brown both came to the city, along with the National Guard to keep order. Then an inferno burned Pine Street, including the segregated elementary school, and the white fire department did not immediately put it out, allowing for utter destruction.

Back then, Pine Street was the only place where Black residents could enjoy music, eat at restaurants and attend school. Cambridge at that time was completely segregated. Pine Street was the Black section; Race Street was the white one. In some ways that’s still true, but Banks has been working to change that.

With his friend, public defender Kisha Petticolas, Banks established the Eastern Shore Network for Change about a decade ago. Their goal has been not only to highlight the Black community’s rich history on Pine Street but also to change the future for the whole community. It comes at a time when President Donald Trump, on a national scale, has sought to erase some Black history and do away with federal programs aimed at leveling the playing field for Black Americans.

That has meant helping to elect the first two Black mayors, pushing to remove a Confederate statue — The Talbot Boys, a monument to the county’s defenders of slavery that sat in front of the courthouse in Easton — and even bringing Richardson back to Cambridge for several events at age 95. It would be her last visit. Richardson died in 2021 at the age of 99 in New York City, where she’d lived for decades.

Banks and Petticolas also created a deep archive with photos and articles that highlight Pine Street’s rich culture prior to the unrest of the 1960s, as well as offering alternative narratives to the reporting of the white press on local events more than 50 years ago.

“When he told me he’d written a book, I said, ‘So what is it, a Black superhero?’ Because that’s pretty much what Dion is. And he said, ‘Yeah,’” Farrow said.

Farrow recalled that, as kids, the two loved the Brown Hornet, a Black superhero on a show-within-a-show that was part of TV’s “The Adventures of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.” Like the Brown Hornet, Kofi is undaunted once he finds his superpower.

The book also rewards students of local history. Kofi’s evil enslaver is Mr. Cannon, a nod to the infamous slave trader and serial killer Patty Cannon of Dorchester County. With her minions, the Cannon/Johnson Kidnapping Gang took hundreds of free Black Marylanders off the streets and sold them into slavery. Caught in 1829 and indicted on murder charges in Delaware, Cannon eventually confessed to two dozen murders before she died in prison.

“I set the book in Cambridge, and she operated here,” Banks said. “So when I am working with these kids, and telling the stories of Harriet Tubman’s time, I do go into complete detail of what Cannon represented.”

Banks plans for the book to be part of a trilogy, and he said the lead character of the second book is going to be a hybrid of Richardson’s fire and Butler’s spirit. He’s working with schools in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., to teach about the book while holding down his day job as a vice president of marketing for a renewable energy company.

Jarmon, a retired county teacher and a founder of the Harriet Tubman Museum and Educational Center, said he became emotional reading the book. Jarmon’s small museum on Race Street has been operating for more than four decades, far longer than the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park in Church Creek, which opened in 2017. Growing up, Jarmon said, he never knew that he and Tubman were from the same county. Banks’ work, both in the book and with the tours he has given to teens, improves the odds that teens will know the area’s history.

“He’s inspiring a new generation of readers,” Jarmon said. “We get the young ones in the museum, but they don’t come back. To the book, they’ll come back.”

As more well-wishers filled a room so historic that Gov. Wes Moore is speaking there on Juneteenth, Ford said his success didn’t surprise her. “He’s a voice that is persistent in most situations in the community,” said the longtime resident.

Farrow gave his friend a hug before heading to New York for his trucking job. There will be more book events, and Farrow said he’d be there, as always, to support his friend.

“He’s just excelled in life. He’s been an inspiration to everything in Cambridge,” Farrow said. “I’m glad I’ve got a friendship with him that, if I call him on the phone, he’s going to pick up.”