Copyright Date:
2021
Edition Date:
2021
Release Date:
02/23/21
Pages:
313 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates
ISBN:
0-8070-4007-X
ISBN 13:
978-0-8070-4007-2
Dewey:
371.8
LCCN:
2020030880
Dimensions:
24 cm.
Language:
English
Reviews:
Kirkus Reviews
Lively history of the teenagers and young adults who fought some of the hardest battles of the civil rights movement.Franklin, a former professor of history and education, begins with a moment unknown to most students of the civil rights era: its largest single demonstration, "not the August 1963 March on Washington, but the system-wide school boycott in New York City on February 3, 1964, when over 360,000 elementary and secondary school students went on strike." Across the nation, schools became battlegrounds, with the students who integrated such places as Lanier High School in small-town Mississippi, some of them fresh from sitting in at a lunch counter in Jackson, serving as frontline soldiers. They were subject to verbal and physical abuse, and one young woman who answered back was expelled from Little Rock's Central High School. Franklin reports the absurdities built into public school systems around the country as they integrated, willingly or not. In Milwaukee, for instance, Black students were bused to a White school in the morning, bused back to their old school for lunch, then bused back to the White school for afternoon classes. The young people who rose up in protest were sometimes brave, sometimes merely sick and tired, as when, nine months before Rosa Parks, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to relinquish her seat on a public bus. "I was just angry," she explained. "Like any teenager might be. I was downright angry." No matter what their motivation, the students eventually won allies-the adult leaders of the civil rights movement, of course, but also Mexican American and White students who, radicalized in the later 1960s, took their side. The author finds reason for the struggle to continue today. "Children and teenagers must mobilize and demand that student loan debt be forgiven and that future generations of students leave college debt-free," he urges, among other planks in a youth platform for today.A compelling narrative that sheds light on a little-known aspect of the struggle for social justice.
Bibliography Index/Note:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
An authoritative history of the overlooked youth activists that spearheaded the largest protests of the Civil Rights Movement and set the blueprint for future generations of activists to follow.
Some of the most iconic images of the Civil Rights Movement are those of young people engaged in social activism, such as children and teenagers in 1963 being attacked by police in Birmingham with dogs and water hoses. But their contributions have not been well documented or prioritized. The Young Crusaders is the first book dedicated to telling the story of the hundreds of thousands of children and teenagers who engaged in sit-ins, school strikes, boycotts, marches, and demonstrations in which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other national civil rights leaders played little or no part.
It was these young activists who joined in the largest civil rights demonstration in US history: the system-wide school boycott in New York City on February 3, 1964, where over 360,000 elementary and secondary school students went on strike and thousands attended freedom schools. Later that month, tens of thousands of children and teenagers participated in the “Freedom Day” boycotts in Boston and Chicago, also demanding “quality integrated education.”
Distinguished historian V. P. Franklin illustrates how their ingenuity made these and numerous other campaigns across the country successful in bringing about the end to legalized racial discrimination. It was these unheralded young people who set the blueprint for today’s youth activists and their campaigns to address poverty, joblessness, educational inequality, and racialized violence and discrimination. Understanding the role of children and teenagers transforms how we understand the Civil Rights Movement and the broader part young people have played in shepherding social and educational progress, and it serves as a model for the youth-led “reparatory justice” campaigns seen today mounted by Black Lives Matter, March for Our Lives, and the Sunrise Movement.
Highlighting the voices of the young people themselves, Franklin offers a redefining narrative, complemented by arresting archival images. The Young Crusaders reveals a radical history that both challenges and expands our understanding of the Civil Rights Movement.
INTRODUCTION
Children and Teenagers: Foot Soldiers for Democracy
PART I: Freedom on Their Minds
CHAPTER 1
Youth and Civil Rights Activism Before the Brown Decision
CHAPTER 2
Grace Under Pressure: Children, Teenagers, and School Desegregation
CHAPTER 3
High School Students and Nonviolent Direct-Action Protests
CHAPTER 4
The Birmingham Children’s Crusade and Southern Student Activism
PART II: The Quality Integrated Education Movement
CHAPTER 5
Freedom Day Boycotts: Chicago, Boston, and New York City
CHAPTER 6
Every Child a Freedom Soldier: Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Mississippi
PART III: From Civil Rights to Black Power
CHAPTER 7
Police Brutality, Black Self-Defense, and Student Activism
CHAPTER 8
Civil Rights, Black Power, and Increasing Youth Militancy
EPILOGUE
“Keep Stirring Up ‘Good Trouble’”
Acknowledgments
Image Credits
Notes
Index
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