The Shadows of Youth: The Remarkable Journey of the Civil Rights Generation

by Andrew B. Lewis

Through the lives of Diane Nash, Stokely Carmichael, Bob Moses, Bob Zellner, Julian Bond, Marion Barry, John Lewis, and their contemporaries, The Shadows of Youth provides a carefully woven group biography of the activists who—under the banner of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—challenged the way Americans think about civil rights, politics, and moral obligation in an unjust democracy. A wealth of original sources and oral interviews allows the historian Andrew B. Lewis to recover the sweeping narrative of the civil rights movement, from its origins in the youth culture of the 1950s to the near present.

The teenagers who spontaneously launched sit-ins across the South in the summer of 1960 became the SNCC activists and veterans without whom the civil rights movement could not have succeeded. The Shadows of Youth replaces a story centered on the achievements of Martin Luther King Jr. with one that unearths the cultural currents that turned a disparate group of young adults into, in Nash's term, skilled freedom fighters. Their dedication to radical democratic possibility was transformative. In the trajectory of their lives, from teenager to adult, is visible the entire arc of the most decisive era of the American civil rights movement, and The Shadows of Youth for the first time establishes the centrality of their achievement in the movement's accomplishments.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race

368 pages, Paperback

First published October 27, 2009

Reviews

[Aminah Mccloud · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almost of the Civil Rights Era focus on MLK. This book doesn’t. The focus seats its self in the nexus between class, gender, geography and urban v rural notions of what is needed for freedom. The also, almost and unsung but vital members of Civil Rights and SNCC efforts along with the shortcomings. The thoughtfulness of the author in reminding us of this revolutionary time, is awesome. Loved reading this and am recommending it to my book club.

[Nichelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tells tge history of seven prominent SNCC veterans, but is unbalanced and anemic when it comes to Diane Nash.

[Sheli Ellsworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew Lewis’s “The Shadows of Youth-The Remarkable Journey of the Civil Rights Generation” is a thorough examination of the student-based civil rights movement. Lewis chronicles the lives of Julian Bond, Stokley Carmicheal, Marion Barry, John Lewis, Bob Moses, Diane Nash, Charles McDew and other student activists from the sit-ins of 1960 to the NAACP convention of 2006.
Lewis cites the birth of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee as reviving the aspirations started by Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955. Originally welcoming both black and white members from around the country; the SNCC galvanized into an energetic and passionate organization.
Lewis takes us on this tumultuous journey in a fact-based account of the movement’s moral and political dilemmas. He allows for the atrocity of racism in the Deep South as well as the difficulty of inter-organizational politics. His view of the student movement working in the shadow of the iconic Martin Luther King is both insightful and alarming. The impact of the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the assassination of Kennedy are also explored in the context of the grass-roots movement. The inception of the more radical Black Panther Party is also examined.
In conclusion, Lewis traverses the eventual psychological impact of the movement on its organizers: friendships were forged and broken; marriages crumbled and drug use was common.
Much of the book is based on interviews with Julian Bond, Diane Nash and Bob Zellner—who was eventually excluded from the SNCC when they changed to a black only membership policy.
The extent of Lewis’s research (it includes an extensive bibliography) makes this an excellent tool and especially fertile ground for screen writers, politicians and anyone interested in this polarizing period of history.

[Rick Elinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading "The Parting of the Waters" with Martin Luther King Jr. as the central focus of the civil rights movement, it was a pleasure to read about the young activists of SNCC giving a very different focus. Their courageous sit-ins, marches, Freedom Rides, and voter registration drives in the segregation-soaked south of Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Mississippi are almost beyond belief. I had known of John Lewis and Stokely Carmichael and Marion Barry and Julian Bond, but I did not know how they each became involved in SNCC, what their roles and accomplishments were, and how they dealt with their post-SNCC years. I recently learned of the amazing Diane Nash. I did not know about the remarkable Ella Baker, Bob Zellner, and Bob Moses. Thank you, Andrew Lewis, for providing this history.

I reread this book March 2023, not realizing that I had read it 3.5 years before. Not sure what that says about my brain, but I really enjoyed the book again. What struck me this time were all the choices of actions and conflicts within SNCC. So many things could have happened differently. Choices were also being made by local, state and federal governments.

On this reading, the most impressive person was Bob Moses. Not only was he the main grassroots mover of voter registration for African-Americans in Mississippi, but he later founded the Algebra Project, which gave underprivileged kids a leg up through mathematics.

[Sabrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book incredibly interesting! It changed my perspective on that time period and has really made me want to learn more about the different student movements over the years. I found it fascinating how history gets interpreted over the years and how that filters down to half truths about people and events.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Shadows of Youth: The Remarkable Journey of the Civil Rights Generation by Andrew B. Lewis (Hill and Wang 2009)(323.1196). There is a small section about the Albany Movement and Sheriff Laurie Pritchett. My rating; 6/10, finished 2010.