The Young Crusaders

the long version

"Filling a gap in the scholarship of American history, V. P. Franklin crafts the first full-length history of the children and teen activists who participated in and led key protests during the Civil Rights Movement"-- It was 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." Franklin shows that 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. Their examples 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. -- adapted from jacket