“Revolutions Happen through Young People!”

Abstract

From the late 1960s through the early 1970s, thousands of black high school students in Boston protested their educational marginalization by staging school boycotts, forming student organizations, and leading demonstrations. They demanded dramatic changes in the content and delivery of education in the Boston Public Schools (BPS). They called for a “culturally relevant education” that valued black culture, to be mentored by black educators, and for collaboration between school and community. Through these arguments for the value of black culture, students rejected characterizations of their racial heritage as inadequate—in a time when theories of cultural inferiority were widespread. Black youth were key players in a decades-long movement led by black Bostonians for educational justice in the BPS. This story challenges a dominant narrative of desegregation and civil rights in Boston, which focuses on busing, white resistance, and court-ordered desegregation. This narrative portrays black Bostonians as apathetic to racial politics and blindly following court-ordered desegregation plans. The story of the black student movement highlights the vital political work performed by black youth in civil rights protest. The erasure of black youth activism from the historical record strengthens stereotypes of black urban teens as apathetic, dangerous, and culturally depraved, which served as a justification for the criminalization of black youth. Their demands for black studies courses, black educators, and the revision of student dress and disciplinary codes forced educators and city leaders to grapple with changing understandings of quality education within the nation’s diverse urban public school systems.