The Children

by David Halberstam

The Children is Halberstam's moving evocation of the early days of the civil rights movement, as seen thru the story of the young people--the Children--who met in the 60s & went on to lead the revolution. Magisterial in scope, with a strong you-are-there quality, The Children is a story one of America's preeminent journalists has waited years to write, a powerful book about one of the most dramatic movements in American history. They came together as part of Rev. James Lawson's workshops on nonviolence, eight idealistic black students whose families had sacrificed much so that they could go to college. They risked it all, & their lives besides, when they joined the growing civil rights movement. Halberstam shows how Martin Luther King Jr recruited Lawson to come to Nashville to train students in Gandhian techniques of nonviolence. We see the strength of the families the Children came from, moving portraits of several generations of the black experience in America. We feel Diane Nash's fear before the first sit-in to protest segregation of Nashville lunch counters. Then we see how Diane Nash & others--John Lewis, Gloria Johnson, Bernard Lafayette, Marion Barry, Curtis Murphy, James Bevel, Rodney Powell--persevered until they ultimately accomplished that goal. After the sit-ins, when the Freedom Rides to desegregate interstate buses were in danger of being stopped because of violence, it was these same young people who led the bitter battle into the Deep South. Halberstam takes us into those buses, lets us witness the violence the students encountered in Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma. He shows what has happened to the Children since the 60s, as they have gone on with their lives. The Children bears the trademark qualities that have made Halberstam one of the leading nonfiction writers of our era. The Children is his most personal book since The Best & the Brightest, a magnificent recreation of a unique period in America, & of the lives of the ordinary people whose courage & vision changed history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, American History, Race, Biography, African American

748 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 24, 1998

About the author

David Halberstam was an American journalist and historian, known for his work on the Vietnam War, politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, and later, sports journalism. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1964.

Halberstam graduated from Harvard University with a degree in journalism in 1955 and started his career writing for the Daily Times Leader in West Point, Mississippi. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, writing for The Tennessean in Nashville, Tennessee, he covered the beginnings of the American Civil Rights Movement.

In the mid 1960s, Halberstam covered the Vietnam War for The New York Times. While there, he gathered material for his book The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era. In 1963, he received a George Polk Award for his reporting at the New York Times. At the age of 30, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the war. He is interviewed in the 1968 documentary film on the Vietnam War entitled In the Year of the Pig.

Halberstam's most well known work is The Best and the Brightest. Halberstam focused on the paradox that those who shaped the U.S. war effort in Vietnam were some of the most intelligent, well-connected and self-confident men in America—"the best and the brightest"—and yet those same individuals were responsible for the failure of the United States Vientnam policy.

After publication of The Best and the Brightest in 1972, Halberstam plunged right into another book and in 1979 published The Powers That Be. The book provided profiles of men like William Paley of CBS, Henry Luce of Time magazine, Phil Graham of The Washington Post—and many others.

Later in his career, Halberstam turned to the subjects of sports, publishing The Breaks of the Game, an inside look at the Bill Walton and the 1978 Portland Trailblazers basketball team; an ambitious book on Michael Jordan in 1999 called Playing for Keeps; and on the pennant race battle between the Yankees and Red Sox called Summer of '49.

Halberstam published two books in the 1960s, three books in the 1970s, four books in the 1980s, and six books in the 1990s. He published four books in the 2000s and was on a pace to publish six or more books in that decade before his death.

David Halberstam was killed in a car crash on April 23, 2007 in Menlo Park, California.

Reviews

[Sheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, I picked this book up because I know almost nothing about the civil rights movement, I was looking for a longish book (I have been plagued with short stories recently) and I liked the “Pulitzer Prize Winning Author” tag across the top. I did not realize until I had started it that it was non-fiction and that Halberstam is a journalist.

As a spoiled little white-girl child of the 1980s, I was less enamored by the thought of a non-fiction 700+ page account of this moment in history; I really would have preferred a historical fiction rendering.

So, I learned a lot that I did not know. I did not know many of the details surrounding the sit-ins and the freedom rides. I did not know many of these names (actually I only knew about four of them: ML King, Marion Barry, Stokley Carmicheal, and Malcom X). And so this book was good for me and it was a well organized way to present the material.

I wasn’t quite sure about the “cast of characters”; the book is title The Children and so Halberstam begins with the college kids in Nashville and the sit-ins. He then follows them to the Freedom Rides and then (after King’s death) kinda spends the last 200ish pages just summing up their lives. I felt kinda meh about this. If this is the only book I’m going to read about the civil rights movement (and it might be), it would be nice to include some of the other stuff. Rather than hear all the details of Hank Thomas’s acquisitions of McDonald’s restaurants or Chris Murphy’s trouble with too much partying it would have been nice to get bit more about Stokely Carmicheal and Malcolm X. This book is about “the children” and a specific moment that starts with the sit-ins and so it neglects the black power movement and the black separatism that followed. This is kind of okay, but I guess I would have rather had the book end around about ML King’s murder than continue to read about these people and not the development of the movement. I was also a little miffed that Halberstam decided to lump some older folks (Jim Lawson, Kelly Smith) in with “the children” (and so we got their later history), but not others (Julian Bond??) who were arguably children (or at least college age like the rest of them) during the initial sit ins.

Overall it was too long for my taste and felt less like a comprehensive historical analysis and more like a spotlight on these 10 lives. They are clearly important lives, but not everything that happened within them were important.

As a concluding aside, I have a Great-Grandmother who was born and raised and lived her whole life in small town Mississippi. When I was a kid (80s to early 90s) we went to her house for Thanksgiving every year. It was the smallest town I had ever seen; there was a one block downtown that consisted of a barber shop, gas station, a jeweler’s store, a furniture store, a pawn shop, and a grocery store. As a small girl (probably about 7 or 8), I had more freedom during this long weekend than I did ever at home (in a suburb of Chicago and West Palm Beach FL). I was allowed to walk all the way from my Grandma’s house (her’s was the first just over the railroad tracks outside of down town) three blocks to the grocery store and pick out a treat ALL BY MYSELF. The town was so small that there was virtually no crime (at least not perpetuated against a small white girl visiting her grandma) and everyone knew who I was. They didn’t know me by name, but they would all say, “you must be Ms. Priscilla’s granddaughter” or something to that effect. The sidewalks were made of wood and were raised about 4 feet from the road. People would park their cars in the angled slots along the sidewalk and then walk to the middle of the block where there was a short staircase to come up to the sidewalk. Once when I was walking down to the store (something I did at least 6 times a day to exercise my freedom) an elderly black man using a cane approached from the other direction. When he got to the mid-block staircase, he walked down it and turned so that his back was facing the sidewalk and he was looking directly out into the street. I thought this was odd and watched him as I approached. Once I had passed him, I turned around to look over my shoulder to see if he was still just standing there looking at the street. He was not. As soon as I had passed, he climbed back up the stairs and continued on his way. When I got home, I asked my mom about this and she explained that it was a sign of respect and that there was a time when he could risk being beaten up (or worse) for walking next to me on the sidewalk. Rather than risk this, he climbed down before he reached me and waited for me to pass. I could not (and still really do not) comprehend the kind of society in which an elderly gentleman had to pay deference to a 7 year old child. Clearly, his life in Mississippi was much different than anything I can imagine, but the image of that man standing and staring out into the street has stayed with me these 30+ years and impacted almost every conversation or thought that I have had about racial relations.

[Thomas DeWolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful reminder of just how young, and how courageous, the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement were; that children in their teens and early twenties truly changed the world. I highly recommend The Children.

From the Author's Note at the end: "I can think of no occasion in recent postwar American history when there had been so shining an example of democracy at work because of the courage and nobility of ordinary people – people hardly favored at the time of birth by their circumstances – than what happened in those days in the South. By that I mean the five years which began in February 1960 with the sit-ins and ended with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 after the Selma protests."

[Sonny · Rating 5 out of 5]

The explosive debate over how to teach about America’s racist past is wreaking havoc on the processes for deciding what students will learn about history. Despite the current debate, it’s hard to deny that America has been a racist nation. Racism has manifested itself in a variety of ways, including genocide, slavery, lynchings, and segregation. Throughout American history, white Americans have generally enjoyed legally or socially sanctioned privileges and rights which have been denied to members of other minority groups, including advantages in education, immigration, voting rights, citizenship, and land acquisition. The first African slaves were brought to Jamestown in 1619; enslavement of African Americans continued until 1865 (246 years). Yet even after emancipation, African Americans faced severe restrictions on their political, social, and economic freedoms. In the era of Jim Crow that lasted from 1865 to 1968 (103 years), black codes were enacted in order to control the behavior of newly freed Blacks in the former Confederacy during the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era. These Jim Crow laws, which author David Halberstam calls “neo-slavery,” were designed to replace the social controls of slavery that had been removed by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Although the Jim Crow laws started in the South, they soon spread around the country. But the end of Jim Crow laws did not mean the end of racism in America. Americans like to think of themselves as above prejudice, but the recent killings of George Floyd in Minnesota and Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia has forced the country to confront the reality that, despite gains made in the past 50 years, we are still a nation riven by inequality and racial division.

― “Their lives, they all agreed, were terribly circumscribed. The ceiling seemed to be as low for them as it had been for the generations which had gone to school just ahead of them. As they spoke, their unwillingness to accept the ceiling placed on them grew.
― David Halberstam, The Children

Author David Halberstam, winner of the 1964 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting, has written a brilliant and stirring history of the early days of the civil rights movement, as seen through the story of the eight black college students in their late teens or early 20s (the “Children”) who met in the 1960s and stepped forward to lead the new phase of the civil rights movement: vigorously opposing the oppressive Jim Crow laws. While some of the young people's names are familiar (e.g., Andrew Young, John Lewis), most are not.

In the late 1950s, a young African-American minister named Jim Lawson arrived in Nashville, Tenn. He had served as a Methodist missionary in India, where he had studied Mohandas Gandhi’s form of nonviolent resistance. Once in Nashville, Lawson began leading training workshops in civil disobedience for a small group of young African Americans in a church basement. At the time of Lawson's seminars, Halberstam was a reporter for Nashville’s daily newspaper, The Tennessean, where he chronicled the Nashville student movement. Many of those attending Lawson’s workshops went on to play important roles in the nascent civil rights movement. The first nonviolent demonstrations they coordinated were the Nashville sit-ins, an attempt to desegregate the lunch counters in downtown Nashville’s department stores beginning in February 1960. Lawson also covers the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), founded in the wake of student-led sit-ins at segregated lunch counters across the South.

― (Pastor) “Kelly Miller Smith had deflected this natural wariness of an older, more wearied generation with great skill; he had brought the young people into his church, had introduced them to his congregation, and he had lavishly praised what they were doing, outlining the terrible risks they were taking each time they set forth. And he had shrewdly chosen to refer to them not as students. The children, he called them again and again, reminding the congregation that they were very young to be taking such chances…”
― David Halberstam, The Children

After the success of the sit-ins, the next phase of protests was the Freedom Rides, a series of bus trips through the South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals and to test recent federal court rulings banning racial discrimination in interstate travel. The Freedom Rides through Alabama and then Mississippi quickly exposed the protestors to violence. But this was the age of television, and the televised news reports of the violence stunned a watching nation.

― That made the job of the activists both simple and dangerous—they had to lure the beast of segregation to the surface and show to ordinary Americans just exactly how it was that the leadership of the South maintained segregation, not as that leadership constantly claimed, by a genteel partnership with its black citizens, but by the exercise of raw and brutal police powers.
― David Halberstam, The Children

In the case of the Freedom Rides and later the march in Selma, Alabama that led to Bloody Sunday, the leaders of the violence were the police. The first buses got to Birmingham, where it was met by a mob of white men armed with pipes, baseball bats and chains. Brutal beatings left the Freedom Riders bloodied and battered. Nine required hospitalization. But what the riders didn’t know was that the plan to meet them — and stop them — had been hatched by the KKK in conjunction with the Birmingham Police Department, acting on the orders of “Bull” Connor, the city’s ultra-segregationist public safety commissioner.

― “They were backed up against a wall, and isolated from most of the others. Lewis could not believe the rage. It was obscene, frenzied, accompanied by an odd sound, a communal roar of anger: He had on occasion seen one or two people out of control, but this was different, hundreds of people, all wielding clubs and bats and pieces of pipe. There was not, he remembered, a single policeman in sight.”
― David Halberstam, The Children

― “Then he had a sense of a mob moving toward the press, where John Lewis was supposed to brief the reporters. Much later they found out that there had been a deal between the Klan and the local police officials. The local cops had agreed to give the Klan fifteen minutes to welcome them and work them over, and then, the damage done, the cops were to arrive. Fifteen minutes to have their pleasure.”
― David Halberstam, The Children

Following the Freedom Rides, the young people began a voter registration campaign. On February 26, 1965, a young civil rights activist named Jimmie Lee Jackson, a deacon in the Baptist church, was participating in a peaceful voting rights march in his city when he was beaten and fatally shot by Alabama state troopers. Two weeks later, a large group of 500 demonstrators led by John Lewis planned to march the 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery, the state capital, to commemorate Jackson’s death. Just as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside Selma, the marchers were assaulted by state troopers and sheriff’s deputies using tear gas and billy clubs. Lewis was one of 17 marchers hospitalized; dozens more were treated for injuries. The march and assaults, covered on national television, quickly became known as Bloody Sunday.

In one compelling vignette after another, Halberstam reveals how much the activists had to overcome, not only in terms of the violence, but also in the fears of their parents. Knowing that they might die, their persistence in the face of scorn and violence is amazing. The commitment to remain nonviolent is even more astonishing. What many of them accomplished with the rest of their lives is heartwarming.

― “They did not think of themselves in those days as being gifted or talented or marked for success, or for that matter particularly heroic, and yet from that little group would come a senior U.S. congressman; the mayor of a major city; the first black woman psychiatrist to be tenured at Harvard medical school; one of the most distinguished public health doctors in America; and a young man who would eventually come back to be the head of the very college in Nashville he now attended.”
― David Halberstam, The Children

Even after the passing of the Civil Rights act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the activists knew that they faced a far tougher enemy. One hundred years of segregation and suppression had created a kind of numbing poverty among most African Americans. As Halberstam points out: “This particular legacy of racism was insidious: It was woven into the fabric of the society, it existed across the nation, without geographical boundaries, and there was no easy modern villain to blame it on….”

The last third of the book follows the lives of the collegiate activists after their college days. For most, their accomplishments are impressive: there was a congressman, pastors, doctors, college professors, a principal and mayors. Sadly, there was one (Marion Barry) who ruined the promise that he had. David Halberstam’s The Children is a masterful achievement in reporting, research and understanding. It’s a powerful and intimate account of a critical time in American history. 4.5 stars.

[Lewis Weinstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

the parts I've read so far are moving and beautiful

[Joseph Sciuto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very simply, one of the best books I have ever read on the nonviolent, civil rights movement of the 1960's. The courage shown by these students and activists is really something to marvel at and applaud. Individuals like John Lewis, James Bevel, Jim Lawson, Bernard Lafayette, Diane Nash, and so many more whose profound amount of courage and vision and faith and suffering helped bring about The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and The Voting Rights Act of 1965... And just as importantly, make the rest of the country and the world take notice of the injustices inflicted upon Black Americans.

A must read, brilliantly written by the great David Halberstam.

[Douglas Graney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a history of the civil rights movement in Nashville. If John Lewis is one of your heroes you'll want to get this.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Halberstam is a safe bet. I've liked everything I've read by him, even his book about the auto industry. This title was on my shelves already when the reading of Parting the Waters inspired me to look more into the civil rights movement.

While Parting the Waters focuses on MLK and the, mostly church-based, leadership, The Children tells the story of the Nashville activists, mostly students, who led the sit-ins in that town during the early sixties. Although they had been preceded by the students in Greensboro by a few days, they, like the Greensboro kids, were sui generis, self-motived, not directed by the leadership. Similarly, after the first Freedom Ride, organized by CORE, was stymied, it was reorganized by these same Nashville students and run successfully. Again, rather than following the established civil rights organizations, these students created situations that the 'leadership' had to scramble to exploit.

These, the individuals involved in the original Nashville actions, are the subjects of what amounts to a series of biographies which carry the principal players into the late nineties. With few exceptions, the stories of these courageous individuals, male and female, are profounding inspiring and often quite moving.

[Brinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Halberstam: maybe the best journalistic writer this country has ever had....

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful book about a handful of young people who fought in the Civil Rights movement.

[Ari · Rating 5 out of 5]

IQ "The Movement had been predominately black, although its aims were integrationist. Led as it was by black Southern ministers, it was religious, nonviolent, and marvelously and often clumsily democratic. It was ecumenical and above all, for people had often lost sight of this, it was optimistic. It was broad based, and it had constantly had one aim, to appeal to the conscience of America. It was, he decided, probably over; at least the part of it driven primarily by a religious force." Bernard Lafayette, 560

After you see SELMA read this book to learn more about the activists briefly mentioned in the movie (such as James Bevel played by Common and Diane Nash played by Tessa Thompson. Side note: Nash is one of my new heroes). Halberstam left no stone unturned. This book focuses on the intersecting lives of the student leaders of the civil rights movement but he also discusses the adults in their lives (both the well known and lesser known) and the approach of various figures of the Kennedy administration. Their stories are inspiring, particularly to me as a college student at the moment but also remind anyone of their own time as a young adult. His writing is excellent, that has an even greater impact because he was there for most of the story. His interviews are vivid and he does a great job extracting information from those he profiles. His book seems particularly timely at the moment because of the movie SELMA and his portrayal of Marion Barry who had only died about a month ago while I was reading this book. I have nothing else to say except READ IT. Please. I really feel that I understand the sacrifices and personalities of those who contributed to the civil rights movement on a deeper level. An exhilarating and galvanizing true story of courageous individuals who seem to be quite rare at this day and age. Some of my favorite quotes are below;

"This was is [Jim Lawson's] most crucial lesson: Ordinary people who acted on conscience and took terrible risks were no longer ordinary people. They were by their very actions transformed. They would be heroes, men and women who had been abused and arrested for seeking the most elemental of human rights" 62

"Indeed, he decided years later, everyone ought to have one pure moment in history, one glorious instant which set you apart from everyone else and made you feel that you were not ordinary, that your life was worth something" 130 Paul LaPrad

"It was at that moment that John Lewis had an epiphany: Not only did their own parents not want them to make the trip, but now the Nashville ministers felt the same way because over the past year they had become the proxy parents of the students. They had all gotten too close to each other. Because they had been through so much together and come to admire one another so much, human emotions and personal attachments were outweighing what was good for the cause. That was wrong, Lewis believed" (275).

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1959, James Lawson, a Methodist minister who spent several years in India studying the methods of Gandhi, organized a group of college students to protest segregation in Nashville through lunch counter sit-ins.. The original group of students attended various local schools including American Baptist College, Fisk University and Tennessee A & I—all primarily black colleges. Among them were the later infamous Marion Barry and John Lewis, who became a Congressman from Georgia. Several of the others became prominent in the larger civil rights movement. Many of them were interested in ministry, or came from backgrounds which gave them deep religious convictions. Halberstam tells the story of these individuals and of others who joined them along the way. He reports on and analyzes the development of the non-violent direct action movement during the early 1960s.

The largest focus is on the students' involvement in the lunch-counter sit-ins that began in early 1960 and in the Freedom Rides that began somewhat later. The students’ movement started in Nashville--which was a relatively liberal city with regard to segregation—and expanded to cities and towns of the “Deep South” in Alabama and Mississippi. There were relatively peaceful mass arrests in Nashville and vicious beatings sanctioned by the local governments in Alabama and Mississippi. Until the later 1960s, these protesters reacted non-violently, and many of them suffered serious injury.

Halberstam comments on the almost complete lack of involvement by the Kennedy administration until confronted with the extreme violence perpetrated on the protestors by law enforcement officials. He discusses the connection between some of the local police and the Ku Klux Klan. He also calls attention to the relatively new phenomenon of television broadcasting these scenes to the average American, and the significant impact on the populace and on the federal government of that visual evidence.

Halberstam was a reporter for the Nashville Tennesseean when the sit-ins started and moved to the New York Times in the early 1960s where his emphasis shifted to the Vietnam War. The writing is that of a very good reporter, but it is not a scholarly investigation and analysis. It is based upon anecdote and interviews with participants in the events and can be taken as a well written factual account. My one criticism is that he spends approximately 200 pages at the end of the book briefly recounting what happened afterward to all of the individuals he saw as key players. Since I was reading it for information about the civil rights movement, I was not so interested in the "after" stories.

I do, however, highly recommend this very readable book, particularly as one that covers the contributions of the less well known young participants in the early civil rights movement.

[Charles Gonzalez · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extraordinary achievement. I have read much of Halberstam's work, starting with Best and Brightest, but this work, based on his first real reporting in Tennessee is a revelation. ALong with Taylor Branch's trilogy of MLK, this story, made me truly understand the definition of American heroism. It is hard if not impossible to think today of a group of young college kids, poor mostly, first of their families to go to college, out to change their world, in spite of overwhelming danger, and obstacles. With no greater armament than their belief in non-violent action, they set out to overwhelm a 400 year legacy in the South and as a by-product light the fuse for the entire 60's ferment. Some of the names are somewhat well known now, though most are forgotten or not known at all. They are my heroes. Heroes of an American history that we can all be proud of,whatever our race, creed or religion. And Halberstam, because he was there, and because he saw and believed in what they were trying to do, communicates with a emotional power and sincerity that is truly amazing. Every American student, every American should read this book. It will be one of my top 25 to give to my grandson when he is ready to read this...

[Brent · Rating 5 out of 5]

WHAT a book: a group biography, written as a return to the civil rights beat by Halberstam, late in his life, having covered Nashville sit-ins and the formation of SNCC as a cub reporter. That's where much transpired, and the careers of these notables follow on from there. Their life stories, interwoven, include a "greatest generation" of young leaders: John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, Diane Nash, James Lawson, James Bevel... and Marion Barry. There is a personal resonance in this narrative in Halberstam's familiarity and fascination with life's highs and lows.
Highest recommendation.

[Joy]

October 2007 Nashville book club book.

I read half and found it very interesting, but very dense. I don't think I'll go back to finish it.

[Chuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent representation of the early Civil Rights movement.

[Kyle Magin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal read. I need some distance, but this might be my favorite Halberstam work. The book begins by profiling the college students in Nashville who integrated the city's lunch counters and blossoms from there to survey most of the post-Brown Civil Rights movement. Halberstam tells the stories by delivering biographies on the key players--John Lewis, Diane Nash, Jim Bevel, etc.--and their families, in addition to giving a blow-by-blow of the lunch counter demonstrations and the Freedom Rides. The chapters on the Freedom Rides are some of the most gripping I've ever read in a thorough history and the book is better for it. Highly, highly recommend.

[Brian Stout · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a good read. Deeply inspiring: a reminder of why I believe in democracy even in the face of overwhelming challenges. Told with the pacing and insight of a veteran reporter, the empathy and essential humanism of someone who was there with the "children" - so compelling. This one will stay with me. I wish the Civil Rights Movement were better taught in schools. As the story of not just MLK and Selma, but of a thousand efforts large and small, of diverse groups united, of the tremendous courage of the young. Should be mandatory reading for adults in America.

[John Porter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eyewitness account of the beginnings of the civil rights movement. How nice to have one of the great journalists/historians of the century there at the time. The participants in the early sit-ins and Freedom Rides are largely forgotten today, which is a shame. They're truly American Heroes. Even with the struggles that many of them faced after the early movement changed and imploded, they deserve this book.

[RYD · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a good reminder of the brutality and inhumanity that segregation was. Though it was occurred occurred in my parents' lifetime, it is easy to forget how hard was the struggle to win even basic dignities for blacks in the south: the ability to eat at a downtown lunch counter, use a non-segregated bathroom or bus, or vote as any other citizen in an election.

[Katrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best history books I have ever read; I was completely engrossed from page 1 to the finish. Beautifully written, I am moved by the stories of the foot soldiers of the Movement. John Lewis, Jim Lawson, Paul LaPrad, Bernard Lafayette, Curtis Murphy, Hank Thomas,Gloria Johnson and Diane Nash are true American heroes. Their stories were expertly told by Halberstam.

[Joann · Rating 5 out of 5]

An must read for anyone interested in American history! This is an absolutely fascinating look at the civil rights movement told through the stories of the extremely young African AMerican students -- including both John Lewis and Marion Barry -- who led the movement.

[Mac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Halberstam is a first rate journalist and this is a first rate account of the modern Civil Rights struggle. A must read for anyone interested in recent American history and for anyone who wants to learn about some of America's real heros.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I lent this book out and wish I got it back. Very memorable, fascinating, detailed story of several young people during this time in history.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing story of people who shaped the civil rights movement. Makes you think "what have I done lately?"

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book about the kids that made up the civil rights movement. A must read if you are interested in that era.

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good examination of the civil rights movement centered around young activists. I read it after hearing Bill Walton recommend it in a radio interview.

[Dale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful

A beautiful account of American heroism by one of my favorite authors. Well worth reading and hard to put down.

[Ashley Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book I have read in 2018.

In the Author's Note, Halberstam explains that the initial reporting of that time and of these people was "quite clinical. . . . [W]e did little to try and humanize the demonstrators." More than 30 years later, he seeks in this book to make up for past journalistic sterility by bringing to life some of the fascinating figures in the movement for racial justice. He does so with a sense of dramatic narrative and appreciation for nuance and complexity that moves the reader to empathy and reflection.

And that is exactly what he does- he humanizes these people who are mythical in the minds of some of us. John Lewis, Diane Nash, Bernard Lafayette, James Bevel, as well as people whom I did not know, such as Gloria Johnson and Hank Thomas. The book looks into their upbringings, as well as their thoughts and friendships during the Movement. Halberstam includes all kinds of stories and anecdotes, in addition narrative descriptions, that made me laugh and cry. For example, during one of the early demonstrations, some whites were threatening to kill some of the students. John Lawson, one of the leaders, asked the man about his leather jacket and they ended up having a conversation about motorcycles, and the students ended up being able to get through unharmed.

"The children" was the term used by some clergy, parents and establishment to characterize the "relentless innocence" of the sit-in leaders whose average age was no more than 20. And this book illustrated that relentless innocence, as well as the deep Christian faith and discipline, that many of the students had. I found the discussions of faith fascinating, and how much of that early movement was born out of theological principals, even though the concept was also tied so much to Ghandi.

Finally, the book does not end when the 60s are over. It follows the lives of those out of the Movement as they come to terms with an "ordinary" life, and how difficult that transition can be, something that I think is often lost in discussion of people who did such brave things.

Anyways, everyone should read this book.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quotable:

He and the people he was advising needed to end the cycle of violence. They needed to start forgiving their enemies. Just as Jesus and Gandhi would have done.

As they accepted themselves, as they accepted that this condition was not their fault, only then would they have the strength to be more tolerant of those who oppressed them. They were to be teachers as well as demonstrators. If they accorded others dignity, there was a great chance in the long run that fair-minded people would accord them theirs. There was a phrase Jim Larson often used in talking about the kind of community they were working to create, and the first time he used the phrase it simply jumped out at John Lewis: the beloved community. It was not a utopia, but it was a place where the barriers between people gradually came down and where the citizenry made a constant effort to address even the most difficult problems of ordinary people. It was above all else an ever idealistic community.

When someone who had never been arrested before complained about the ill-fitting nature of the prison clothes they had been handed by the Mississippi authorities, Bevel seemed irritated. This was not a fashion show; Gandhi, he added, had wrapped a rag around his balls and had brought down the entire British empire.

[T]he roots of modern black political organization rested, like so much else, in the black Baptist church.

[Peggy Curlin]

Brought my college years back to life. Wish I had known at the time the significance of what I was peripherally participating in (as a white college student in Florida) and the amazing paths the "children" followed. In some ways I still have hope because we have come a long way, but in other ways I feel discouraged because we seem to be going backwards. I have to hold faith that the arc of history does bend towards justice. Eventually.