Starred Review We were all ordinary kids. For too long most accounts of the civil rights movement have focused on the leaders. In this fine collection of oral histories, 30 African Americans who were children and teenagers in the 1950s and 1960s talk about what it was like for them in Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas: sitting in; riding at the front of the bus; integrating schools; braving arrest and violence, even death. Levine provides a clear framework, organizing the personal accounts into chapters, first, on what segregation was like, and, then, on the stages of the struggle, from the Montgomery bus boycott and the Freedom Rides to Bloody Sunday and the Selma movement. In each chapter she introduces the individual stories with a general view of the political scene, and at the back of the book she provides a detailed chronology and who's who and a bibliography. But it's the dramatic immediacy of the first-person accounts that will hold kids fast: Claudette Colvin tells what it was like for her at 15 when she was the first--before even Rosa Parks--to refuse to give up her seat on the bus. Several people remember what it was like to sit in and demand to be served in an all-white restaurant (You would have thought we had walked in nude, or had three eyes). They remember the sense of solidarity with white Freedom Riders who risked their lives, and several recall personal meetings with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Above all, they communicate what it was like to find courage they didn't know they had and to transform themselves and the world around them. (Reviewed Dec. 15, 1992)

This compilation of thirty oral histories of young African Americans involved in the civil-rights movement, collected through extensive interviews, is a unique approach to the history of that time. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs, the dramatic and tragic stories of the lives of ordinary folk under segregation make compelling reading. Brief biographies of the presenters add to the usefulness of the volume. Bib., ind.

Using the words of participants in the landmark struggles in Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi, Levine powerfully re-creates their experiences. <p> Using the words of participants in the landmark struggles in Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi, Levine powerfully re-creates their experiences. Seeking out African-Americans who were children or teenagers at the time--none of them famous though many intimates of figures like Michael Schwerner, Fannie Lou Hamer, or Martin Luther King, Jr.--the author records their memories of segregation and of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (Claudette Colvin, 15, refused to give up her seat nine months before Rosa Parks's similar action); of integrating the schools (the black students' dogged persistence while enduring the open antagonism and injustices of classmates and teachers may be the most moving heroism in a book where extraordinary courage inhabits every page); of sit-ins, freedom rides, and voter registration drives; of the Selma march. Prefacing each section with historical background, Levine skillfully selects accounts to portray the period, the particular circumstances, the people involved, the brutality and intransigence of the whites, the powerful sense of brotherhood, community, and self-worth that the Movement engendered in blacks, and their reliance on their faith and on unyielding nonviolence. Notes on the 30 interviewees here reveal varied later lives: teachers, lawyers, and other members of the middle class; a home health aide, an assistant secretary of labor in the Carter Administration. Inspiring and richly authentic source material: a must. Chronology (1954-68); bibliography of additional sources; b&w photos and index not seen. (Nonfiction. 10+)</p> "