The Young Men and Women of the Civil Rights Movement

In "The Children" David Halberstam pays homage to the forgotten heroes of the Civil Rights movement, those idealistic young blacks who courageously put the rights of their people above their own lives. Halberstam tracks their progress from the children of blacks who have somehow found to negotiate with an intolerably racist world to fighters for a more racially tolerable world. History was of course on their side. World War II (where blacks made the ultimate sacrifice for a land that treated them as inferior citizens) and America's growing affluence meant that America would eventually become a more tolerant society, but that did not mean fighting in the front lines of the Civil Rights movement was the less dangerous than it actually was. Lives were lost, and casualties were many. History in the form of television was there to capture it all, and Americans did not like what they saw.

This is not the best book on the Civil Rights movement nor will it be the last. It is neither well-written nor well-argued; it is ultimately an act of love and respect from an author whose career began covering the Civil Rights' young heroes.

The Children is David Halberstam's look at the college students who helped make the Civil Rights movement a success. The book is fascinating; Halberstam sweeps you along as events unfold. It is difficult to believe that things were so different just a few years ago. Even at 700+ pages, The Children is difficult to put down.

To me, the best part of The Children is its characters. Halberstam has a gift for making his characters come alive; you feel that you know these young people, warts and all. One of the most fascinating aspects of these biographies is what happened to the characters as the Civil Rights movement ended; some of them were quite successful, others could never find anything as fulfilling. (It is interesting to read Halberstam's take on James Bevel, given that Bevel has been convicted of incest since The Children's publication).

The dust jacket of The Children notes that it is Halberstam's "most personal" book. I think that this works for and against the book. Certainly, Halberstam has a great grasp on "what happened when" and he took the time to get to know each of the Civil Rights workers on a deep level. In other ways, Halberstam's passions work against him. Too often, Halberstam falls for the easy out of caricaturing people he does not like; he cavalierly characterizes Ralph David Abernathy, rival journalists, politicians, college professors, religious leaders, and numerous others as nothing more than one-dimensional simpletons.

Halberstam's opinionated prose reminded me of a review I once read; it stated that Halberstam's gift for narrative can obscure the fact that his approach isn't always 100% solid as history. Given that Halberstam states his opinions as established facts, I think that's a fair synopsis of The Children as well.

On the whole, however, The Children is quite an accomplishment. It tells the story of how a few seemingly-ordinary people helped create a more just society - and Halberstam tells that story in a way that entertains and fascinates the reader.

Having been a college student at Fordham when James Farmer came and explained the Freedom Rides; ignoring the colored only water fountain and men's room signs in Florida in 1963 and then learning of the faith based origins of the Nashville sit-ins reading this riveting history of the originators of the protest I believe this book should be required reading. By required reading I intend that it should be absolutely read by students of history as an abject lesson in violence only breeds violence . We must emphasize the preaching of Lawson that the idea is stronger than any resort to brute force. That lesson brought down Bull Connor, amongst others. That lesson must be brought home to the current critics of integration and must be re-instituted to bring about the ideal, "All men are created equal".

Halberstam has produced another masterpiece, perhaps his best since B&B. As with Vietnam, this book is permeated by his personal experience as a young reporter full of ambition and working hard to find a story. The story here are the young people, who appeared as if out of nowhere in Tenessee, and entered history with their courage and dignity.

What distinguishes this book from others on the civil rights campaign is its focus not on the most visible leaders of the fight - ML King, Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers - but on the students who served as foot soldiers and then leaders in their own right. These were young people whose names are not household words, but whose courage and action did as much to change American society and politics as King and the others. It is a truly amazing and inspiring story, as they started in Nashville with solid training in Ghandian non-violence techniques and then went into the deep south, where they were beaten and threatened with a viciousness that shocked the world. In the process their audacity not only pushed a reluctant and cautious MLK to greater ambition, but they matured as political actors and many went on to outstanding careers as politicians, teachers, and preachers.

Halberstam delineates how their non-violence and charismatic dignity in the face of these threats dovetailed with the development of television, broadcasting the brutality of the old south into the living rooms. It was this combination - a mass movement addressing centuries-old injustices, the bad-guy thugishness of their primitivie adversaries, and TV's images - that culminated in the Civil Rights and then Voting Acts of 1965. It is a fascinating analysis of how politics was changing at the time.

But Halberstam doesn't stop there: he also chronicles the aftermath, when new "separatist" leaders emerged, like Stokely Carmichael, who split the extraordinary unity of the movement for more selfish purposes. He also evokes the deterioration of the inner cities as the issues shift to the far more difficult and ill-defined challenges of poverty and personal identity. It is the other half of the story - the disappointing aftermath - when lesser politicians took over and disillusionment set in after a series of terrible assasinations. Perhaps it was inevitable, as the society digested such fundamental change and moved on to the Vietnam war period.

Most interestingly, Halberstam follows many of these students leaders through their entire careers, which serve as the vehicles to portray the issues in the paragraph above. We see some of them unable to sustain the intensity of their purpose, sometimes degenerating into self-destructive paths or irrelevancy as single mothers, demagogues of questionable sanity, and drug abusers. But there were many who became great leaders, entering politics as congressmen and demonstrating that the right to vote really did change America into a more inclusive society, or becoming business men - they were able to participate fully in an integrated society, the first generation of blacks to do so. These individual portraits are masterpieces of depth reporting and the humanistic impulse, which are the hallmarks of Halbertam's unique voice.

This book rises to great eloquence, his best since B&B. Warmly recommended as one of the best books I read in years.

David Halberstam has written an epic history of the young men and women, most still in their teens, who had the courage and nobility of spirit to fight the unjust status quo of segregation, and change the course of our nation's history. This is the story of the civil rights movement in the United States, beginning in the late 1950s and reaching its height in the mid-1960s. The story is told from the eyes of these young people - it is the history they made. "The Children" frequently put their lives on the line, risking physical danger and even death, to join the non-violent protests that would give all Americans equal rights under the law.
The Movement's leaders were two black southern ministers, both strongly influenced by the teachings of Mahandas Gandhi. These two men, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jim Lawson, designed the framework of the mission. They stratagized like generals waging a unique war. Young college students, mostly African Americans, whose parents had sacrificed much to send them to university, were recruited as soldiers. These vulnerable and committed students were schooled in the nonviolent tradition, with workshops, such as: "Justice Without Violence" and "The New Negro In The New South." We meet these children and hear of their experiences in Nashville, Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma, and many other towns and small cities all over the South. Halberstam documents the background of these young troops, their families, and struggles, growing up Black in America. He movingly describes the sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, and the terrible violence of the Klan, and of ordinary citizens, steeped in bigotry, that endangered all of them. We read about the voter registration campaigns, and the founding of SNCC and CORE. The moral, philosophical and political roots of the civil rights movement, and the divisiveness within the group as different ideologies emerged, are well documented, as is the death of Dr. King.
Halberstam draws an amazing portrait of Jim Lawson, whose fervor and dedication moved a generation of Americans to action. The author truly excels, however, in bringing to life the young people whose story this is. We are updated, toward the end of the book, on the lives of the young activists today. This incredibly moving history reads like a novel you don't want to put down. And while we read about a most shameful period in our nation's history, who can fail to be proud of the young citizens who took action to make such important changes?

David Halbestam's monumental book, the children, is a hymn of praise to a remarkable group of young people who did much, perhaps most, of the heavy lifting of the civil rights movement. But it is also the story of how one man, James Lawson, influenced a movement and changed a nation. There are many heroes portrayed in Halberstam's book, but perhaps the one indispensable person in the success of the civil rights movement was not Martin Luther King, Jr., but James Lawson. This is not to diminish or belittle the contributions of King, for what more can a man give than his life. But even Halberstam doesn't seem to recognize that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 might never have come about had it not been for the remarkable acheivement of James Lawson in attracting and training the first group of young, tremendously dedicated non-violent protesters in Nashville in 1959 and 1960. This is one of the most inspirational books I have ever read, and while, as several of the reviewers have already noted, the book could have done with some paring of redundancies, if you want a story filled with heroes and heroines, with light overcoming darkness and the good guys winning, this is your book. It should be required reading for every young person in America. James Lawson, jailbird, "draft dodger" and the ultimate "outside agitator," has lived a life of consequence and significance that most of us can only dream about. The remarkable thing is that he found other young people who wished to live lives equally challenging. Human beings, if they are lucky, are given only a few rare opprotunities in their lives to make a real and great impact on their world. Lawson, Nash, LaFayette, Bevel, Powell, Brown, Johnson and the wonderous John Lewis among many others, seized their opportunity, and made life better for not only millions of Black folk held hostage to racism and ignorance, but for millions of their white oppressors as well. The great tragedy is that as the Movement entered its period of greatest success, it was, like the Russian Revolution, seized by some of the most radical elements in what had been the fringes of the movement. And we lost Martin Luther King, Jr., the most effective voice of the nation's conscience.

Civil rights has been THE major domestic story of the last 50 years. and has thus figured prominently in David Halberstam's historical books. Black players and their respective teams' treatment of them provided the drama in "October 1964," and the seismic "Brown" decision and its aftermath inspired some of the finest chapters in "The Fifties."
"The Children" finds Halberstam focusing completely (more than 80 chapters over 700 pages) to the lives and deeds of young college students who broke the back of Deep South segregation. Drawing on a novelist's drama and a reporter's detail (Halberstam covered those first Nashville sit-ins) he creates a near-Biblical (in quality and length) liberation story.
Comparisons to dramatic Biblical episodes abound in "The Children." Compare leader Jim Lawson's meeting with Dr. King to Moses' being commanded to lead his people from Egypt. Compare Jesus' choosing of his first disciples to Lawson, who brought and taught young men and women, black and white, to nonviolently integrate the South's lunch counters, interstate buses, and finally their voting booths. Compare Paul and Silas' prison terms with those the students suffered in legendary prisons like Mississippi's Parchman Farm.
The analogy extends to personalities, where Halberstam does some of his finest, fairest writing. Compare the most violent Biblical villains to Halberstam's Southern Goliaths: sheriffs Bull Connor and Jim Clark, newspaper editor Jimmy Stahlman. Compare the bombastic, emotional apostle Peter to Jim Bevel, the rock-steady Martha to activist Diane Nash, the money-grubbing Judas to the fall of Washington mayor Marion Barry. The story has its prodigals also, from a federal government moving from silent aggravation to active protection of "the Movement," to even the Vanderbilt college president who repented of releasing Lawson from divinity school. Unlike TV reporting of the movement, which covered its characters as noble heroes opposing violent cartoon buffoons, Halberstam equally chronicles the reasons and motivations of his story's heroes and villains.
The book (and Movement's) climax comes with the Voting Rights Act signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. The story then fractures between accounts of a fraying movement after King's death to members personal lives, with less dramatic effect. Some live in near-poverty (Nash) or make fortunes (Hank Thomas). Some lead congregations (Lawson) or go to prison for their own misdoings(Barry). Some marry and lead satisfied, if not completely happy lives (Curtis Murphy) or question their sexuality and reach a reasonable balance (Rodney Powell). But, as many do, they compare relatively mundane lives with the exciting accomplishments of youth, with a collective "Now what?" for a response.
Overall, "The Children" despite occasional redundancy and lyrical flab, remains an essential look at an often overlooked part of American history. Anyone questioning the usefulness of voting, or why they should register, MUST read the middle portion (Book II) of "The Children."

Halberstam's The Children is a moving account of young civil right's activists in the late 1950's and 1960's. We are privy to their self-doubts, the aspirations, the anxieties, and finally, the triumphs of those who organized and participated in demonstrations to abolish the cultural icons of Southern segregation: department store lunch counters; bus terminal waiting areas; and public restrooms among others. It is a book about black Americans electing to fight non-violently for the rights and dignities they had been denied, and how they confronted the clan, and unsympathetic southerners and police who fought their efforts with bigotry and fear. I would recommend this book for anyone interested in the civil rights struggle of the 1960's which eventually led to the federal government's involvement in protecting the demonstrators, and ultimately led to the Civil Rights Bill. There are also particularly interesting insights into benchmark events and people of the period including the march on Washington, confrontations in Selma and Birmingham, the courage of the Freedom Riders, perceptions of JFK, RFK, Hoover, LBJ, and King. All in all, this was a very interesting read, offering personal glimpses of a tumultuous period, and I would strongly recommend this book for people who enjoy personal reflections of historic events.

No one writes the stories of big historical or social movements better than David Halberstam, and "The Children" is no exception. As readers of his other "big" books ("The Best and the Brightest," "The Powers That Be," "The Reckoning," "The Fifties") would expect, Halberstam chooses to tell the story of the budding civil rights movement not from the standpoint of the leaders, like M. L. King or Medgar Evers, but from the standpoint of the peacetime footsoldiers, who rallied the people and took the blows (literally) that ultimately ended segregation in the South. As always, Halberstam's prose is impeccable: intelligent, literate, witty, and above all, imbued with a deep and abiding sense of humanity. The young people in his story are heroes, but they're also people, and he makes us see them as such, with all their doubts, fears, and conflicting emotions. It's hard to think of a nearly 800 page book as a thriller, but I would dare anyone to read the first two sentences of Halberstam's Prologue and NOT feel the power of a master storyteller taking hold. To read "The Children" is to be reminded, and charged, by the power of democracy to achieve social change, and it is also to grieve, a bit, at how little has been achieved in the last twenty years.

David Halberstam's publication "The Children" is an exciting overview of the Civil Rights Movement from an enamored journalist through the eyes of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. (SNCC) The author focuses on the major players such as Diane Nash, James Bevel, Jim Lewis, Curtis Murphy, Bernard Lafayette and James Lawson, with heavy emphasis on the Nashville Sit-In Movement and Freedom Rides. The strength of his work is that it reads much more like a fast paced novel than an academic analysis. He does however at the same time provide plenty of background material and socio-economic, political and cultural variables within his work. Halberstam also revisits these former SNCC workers after the "high" of the movement and even much later in life. It's quite obvious the work of a journalist within the pages.

This is a good overview of Civil Rights through the eyes of SNCC rather than a broader based examination of the movement. Halberstam's book is quite impressive, and what I admire is the length of information he was able to attain from the vast interviews he received, largely because he had already covered and had known many of the players as a journalist covering the Civil Rights Movement. If you are just starting out or have little knowledge of the Civil Rights Movement this book would be a good starting point. Journalists make great writers because they simply know how to tell a story. Well done!

David Halberstam is one of those writers who seem to have more words than he can reasonably use. His books fairly bulge at the seams and yet in reading any of his works, it is seldom that a reader feels that too much has been included. As a reporter he seems to have fallen in love with the tangible fact, the telling detail, and he fills his books with them. The Children, an account of the young men and women who initiated the 'sit ins' that sparked the early civil rights movement, is as richly detailed as a Durer etching. The cast of characters is large and the setting in which they are placed is brought to life with great skill.
Halberstam has a way of making sense of things that might mystify most writers. He does this by creating a meaningful context and by deomonstrating meaningful connections - between actions as well as characters. There is a lot of book here, and one can easily loose sight of the story line by getting bogged down in some of the detailed digressions that he seems to love, but taken as a whole, this book makes real the mostly unremembered young heros who drug their elders kicking and screaming into the movement.
I think this is a very important book and deserves a place on any bookshelf devoted to our recent history.

David Halberstam, as always, tells the whole story of events in history of which too little is known. He brilliantly details the lives and experiences of the front-line soldiers in the civil rights movement--the men and women (actually boys and girls...hence the name of the book) who had the courage to risk their lives to attain well-deserved and historically denied rights. Prior to this work, historians focused on King and his associates. I prefer the perspective and approach of Halberstam.
The reader becomes engrossed in the lives of the people. Halberstam lets us in on their organization, their disagreements, affairs, loves, families, fears, hopes, failures and successes. Most amazingly, he contrasts the children's reaction to racism with that of their parents. The younger generation's frontal assault on the segregationist strongholds is truly amazing. The stories of the freedom riders is engrossing.
Not Halberstam's best book (that would be the Fifties) but pretty darn close.

This fills in the blanks of history I lived through, too young to know how folks only slightly older than me were changing the world I would grow up in. By following the sit-in leaders as individuals, we see not just what they did, but how their historic contributions fit into the larger cycle of their lives. Great book. Sometimes Halberstam is too dense for me, but this book was highly readable, probably because so much was conveyed in the stories of the people who were there.

David Halberstam has written so many great works, but THE CHILDREN may be his greatest achievement. From the outset, this book takes readers on a journey through the civil rights movement through the eyes of both the courageous young people who had decided that our society had to change and the adults who helped them to bring this needed change to America. The book captures readers from the beginning as Halberstam gives a very intimate look at the fear Diane Nash experienced as one of the leaders of Nashville's sit-in movement. The first chapter gives readers a window through which to see the conflicting forces that collided in the heart and mind of Ms. Nash as she contemplated the enormity of what she was doing: changing the south against the wishes of many who, if they had their way, would just as soon hang her as look at her.

The chapters of this work flow so well, and the reader is introduced to so many who made the civil rights movement what it was: Diane Nash, John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, Jim Lawson, James Bevel, C.T. Vivian, etc. etc. etc. The book, a work of historical non-fiction reads almost like a novel. Readers are drawn in by the stories of these heroes, and their triumphs and tragedies take readers on a roller-coaster ride of emotion as they are thrust into this amazing struggle.

Halberstam tells a great story, but the story he tells in this book tops them all. I have read many, many books on the movement, and this is my favorite. I had the tremendous honor to meet John Lewis last summer, and as we talked about much of what he experienced during this period, he asked me "Have you read THE CHILDREN?" When I told them that I had, he commented about what a great book he thought it was and how Halberstam had perfectly captured, as much as possible, what that time was like for those of us who weren't there. John Lewis is a personal hero of mine, and I can think of no better praise for this book. On that note, I would also highly recommend Mr. Lewis' book WALKING WITH THE WIND for those who haven't read it and want another good civil rights title.

So much in this story I needed to understand. My experiences during the 60s reflect only a small part of the bigger picture. I witnessed the Philadelphia riots,was in LA when Robert Kennedy was assassinated as well as in Memphis when King was shot. This book helped me see the larger picture.

Author Halberstam needs no introduction, and, in my eyes, this is one of his most underrated books, which is saying something.

A wonderful and moving portrait of important American history. I write this review of one of my favorite works of history the morning after President Obama's inauguration. President Obama! And how wonderful to see Rep. John Lewis being such an important part of the proceedings.

A great work of history by possible the most important American historian of the second half of the 20th century.

The Civil Right Movement was the precursor for all the Social Upheaval of the second half of the Twentieth Century. Here, Halberstam documents some of the seminal characters that moved America to become aware of it's immorality. His description goes far beyond what they did, but toward how they came to the point in their lives where they faced down hate, prejudice and even death in the struggle for equality.

David Halberstam's account of the individauls who penetrated the ideology of their time has not only summarized, but clearly helped to put the human story of flesh and blood on those who lived through that time in history. He captured the realization that all things are possible when all the factions of time, space and thought intersect. This is a very sensitive manuscript of how and why elements of life emerge into a Movement of practical idealism for the ages. I applaud David for his research, his clarity of organization, and his sensitivity. Those who were not physically present for the movement, but live the present moment striving for a deepening sense of what true freedom and justice can be, can truely give thanks for the foundation that was set by The Children.

I arrived as a freshman at Vanderbilt in 1966 completely ignorant of this. I wish I had known more about it then, though I managed to get to know some of the players a bit. Reading it now, with the perspective of decades, is very informative, stirring, and more than a little sad.

Halberstam recalls reverently and even lovingly the glory days of his journalistic career when he was assigned to the civil rights efforts of "the children" in Tennessee in the early 1960's. With such a sacred topic, is it blasphemous to ask for the Reader's Digest version? Halberstam is quite redundant here--even repeating citations more than once. It's a good and moving history--but the same incidents more than once in the same history are too much. Who let this book go to print in this form? A potential classic becomes laborious.

The book is an interesting read. The author spends a significant amount of time introducing the characters. However, it is a wonderful read that fills in a lot of blank spaces in my knowledge of the civil rights movement.

Excellent read! Sets a great foundation for further reading about the Civil Right Movement.
Editing could have been a little more attentive- a set of paragraphs repeats but overall a fast paced read.

I very much appreciated the in-depth look at many aspects of the Civil Rights movement. However, Halberstam's book contained too much repetition, and I wonder why an editor did not persuade the author to reduce the length of his book. I also wonder why there has been such a strong trend to abandon many of the positive aspects of textbooks in favor of straight narratives when writing non-fiction. This book would have benefited from a listing of the biographies of principal players and a one-page timeline of the Civil Rights Era. Those would have provided easy access to reviewing characters without telling their stories multiple times.

If you love modern history told in a riveting way, this is the book for you. The story of the young people who changed the face of the Civil Rights Movement by their courage, confidence, and disciplined spiritual approach to non-violent protest, it is a riveting tale. Halberstam (who left us way too soon) was a reporter in Nashville wen the group that became SNCC first formed to conduct sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in the downtown area. Before they began taking action, they studied Gandhi and passive resistance and were as prepared as possible to turn the other cheek to the violence and harassment they got. From there, they jumped into the Freedom Rides and again put their training to amazing use as they were beaten by mobs and challenged by organized Ku Klux Klan groups working in cahoots with local law enforcement. Their actions forced Pres. Kennedy and Rob't Kennedy to get off the sidelines of the civil rights movement and commit federal resources to protect the riders and enforce the law. I could not put this book down. Highly highly recommend!