The Children [J0470]

1998 HCDJ with amazingly little wear. From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Fifties, comes an "intimate and monumental" account of the people at the core of the civil rights movement (Publishers Weekly). The Children is Halberstam's moving evocation of the early days of the civil rights movement, as seen thru the story of the young people--the Children--who met in the 60s & went on to lead the revolution. Magisterial in scope, with a strong you-are-there quality, The Children is a story one of America's preeminent journalists has waited years to write, a powerful book about one of the most dramatic movements in American history. They came together as part of Rev. James Lawson's workshops on nonviolence, eight idealistic black students whose families had sacrificed much so that they could go to college. They risked it all, & their lives besides, when they joined the growing civil rights movement. Halberstam shows how Martin Luther King Jr recruited Lawson to come to Nashville to train students in Gandhian techniques of nonviolence. We see the strength of the families the Children came from, moving portraits of several generations of the black experience in America. We feel Diane Nash's fear before the first sit-in to protest segregation of Nashville lunch counters. Then we see how Diane Nash & others--John Lewis, Gloria Johnson, Bernard Lafayette, Marion Barry, Curtis Murphy, James Bevel, Rodney Powell--persevered until they ultimately accomplished that goal. After the sit-ins, when the Freedom Rides to desegregate interstate buses were in danger of being stopped because of violence, it was these same young people who led the bitter battle into the Deep South. Halberstam takes us into those buses, lets us witness the violence the students encountered in Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma. He shows what has happened to the Children since the 60s, as they have gone on with their lives. The Children bears the trademark qualities that have made Halberstam one of the leading nonfiction writers of our era. The Children is his most personal book since The Best & the Brightest, a magnificent recreation of a unique period in America, & of the lives of the ordinary people whose courage & vision changed history.

From recent-ish Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "You can tell that Halberstam used to be a newspaper reporter - this book reads like a long-form newspaper article. And that's a good thing - it's well-paced, informative, and captivating."; "Very well written. There were so many people and stories, this history could have been overwhelming and dry. The author created a fantastic net of overlapping stories that kept my attention but didn't confuse or overwhelm."; "The Children is one of the most moving books I’ve read. The story captures the heroic actions and deeply moral character of the young men and women who are at the center of the book’s story, the unity and individuality of that group. David Halberstam paints with the words of his characters, sharing their voices, letting us feel their personalities, helping us understand their context. Touching, engaging, informative, challenging. It’s a fine book telling us of an awesome group of fellow Americans addressing a critical flaw in the American experiment."