The shadows of youth : the remarkable journey of the civil rights generation

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. A Group Portrait Of Leading Civil Rights Activists Who Comprised The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Draws On Original Sources To Illuminate How These Young Americans Challenged The Way America Thinks About Civil Rights, Politics, And Moral Obligations. Prologue : Freedom High -- Qualities Of Youth. Sure Bugs Me : The Civil Rights Generation And The Failures Of The 1950s ; Generation Gaps : The Civil Rights Generation And The Promise Of The 1950s ; The Sit-in Craze : How The Movement Got Its Groove Back ; More Than A Hamburger : From Student Protesters To Civil Rights Activists ; Highway 61 Revisited : Inroads In The Deep South ; The Dreams That Break Your Heart : Freedom Summer -- Shadows Of Youth. Unravelings : A Generation Comes Apart ; Angry Young Men In The Season Of Radical Chic : The Black Power Movement ; Exiles : The Ennui Of Victory ; The Power Brokers : Sncc Alumni And The Making Of Black Political Power ; Idols : The Civil Rights Generation In Power. Andrew B. Lewis. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [307]-335) And Index. A group portrait of leading civil rights activists who comprised the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee draws on original sources to illuminate their challenges to American perspectives on human rights, politics, and moral obligation.