Young Activists: American High School Students in the Age of Protest

Abstract

One of the aims of the neoconservative analysis of recent decades has been the redefinition of sixties activism as the adolescent acting out of indulged, middle-class college students. Even some veteran memoirists of the era have fallen into the trap of seeing their contemporaries as either frivolous or irrelevant to the political undercurrent of the era. Books such as Gael Graham's Young Activists help redress that misrepresentation and suggest just how deeply the impact of sixties issues went. After describing what she calls the “changing world” of high school students, Graham divides her work into six chapters (p. 15). Five focus on a particular 1960s issue—desegregation, black and brown power, student rights, student power, and the Vietnam War and radical politics—and one on the response of educators. She has wisely contacted former student activists from across the country and salts each off her chapters with personal and often poignant examples from a very far-flung group.