Thomas L. Bynum. NAACP Youth and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1936–1965.

Abstract

Thomas L. Bynum's book examines the youth councils and college chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), moving from the formal organization of NAACP youth activities under Juanita Jackson in the late 1930s through the sit-in movement of the 1960s. Bynum describes how “youth chapters staged antilynching demonstrations, campaigned for equal educational and employment opportunities, challenged discrimination and segregation in public facilities, and called for full civil liberties” (p. xiii). These young NAACP members engaged in grassroots organizing and nonviolent direct-action protests in the decades before the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) brought national attention to black youth activism. NAACP Youth and the Fight for Black Freedom surveys dozens of different NAACP youth protests across the country, including demonstrations that targeted movie theaters, skating rinks, and barbershops. The book is at its best when it offers detailed examples regarding local protests. The Youth Council in East Chicago, Indiana, for example, challenged the segregated seating policies at local movie theaters. To avoid desegregation, the owners of two of the theaters began showing Spanish movies, which they thought would drive away the black teenagers. In response, the Youth Council members “picketed the theater using Spanish placards and distributed Spanish leaflets.” After six weeks of picketing, they successfully desegregated the theater (p. 55). Similarly, the NAACP chapter at Pennsylvania State College staged a mass demonstration to protest the fact that the school's barbershops refused to serve black students. “The boycott of the state college barbershops symbolized more than the students' fight to get a haircut at the local barbershop,” Bynum writes. “The boycott revealed their fight for human dignity and their sincere efforts to be fully integrated into all aspects of campus life at white colleges and universities” (p. 57).