I expected this book to be worth reading. I didn't expect it to be so worthwhile in the way it was. At its core, this is a book about the young black students in Nashville, led by a devout apostle of the nonviolent approach to social action of Mahatma Gandhi, to begin what in some respects was the second major leg of the American Civil Rights Movement with the Nashville Boycotts, starting in 1958. (Rosa Parks was taken off the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in late 1955, beginning the Montgomery boycott. Emmitt Till was killed a few months earlier, with his mother courageously using an open casket to show the world what had been done to her son, in essense to all blacks over the many Jim Crow years.) The author writes about the actions together and apart of the people in this civil rights movement, often taking the reader aside to tell a sort of mini-biography of the cast of characters, allowing a deeper understanding of the complexities of managing a group of each of the individuals joining together to accomplish a type of societal earthquake. As I delved into the story being told, I sensed a certain tone to the writing, a certain reserve, which I eventually decided was one of reverence for the people he was writing about. The author is able to pass along this same reverence to readers by immersing us into the very human aspects of the individuals and their goals. The narrative goes beyond the Nashville boycotts to the Freedom Riders and, somewhat less so, to Freedom Summer, the March on Washington, and other notable events. All in all, the blending of biographies and deep insights into historical events is quite mesmerizing. Eventually, however, the author gets to the follow-through. What happened to these "characters" after all these notable events? In a movie, this is usually just a few minutes, at best, of "Bill Jones, quarterback for the State Champion football team, now sells used cars in his hometown. Mary Smith went on to serve as a nurse in the Vietnam War..." In this book, the author essentially continues the mini-biographies of each of the cast of characters, some being natural extensions of what they had been doing as students, some far removed, into such items as what Dairy Queen they sold to get a Burger King franchise, which they, in turn, traded in for a McDonald's franchise. In short, not every follow-up was instructive to the point of the book, but the author seemingly felt compelled to tie up all lose ends. Indeed, the author was thorough in his reporting throughout. So, what exactly made the author write this book the way he did? He is best known for a Pulitzer Prize and best-selling books on the Vietnam War. Secondarily, he is also very well known for his classic sports related books about epic World Series games and the like. (He died in a car accident on his way to interview a famous NFL quarterback in research for another epic championship game.) The answer comes from the fact that this notable journalist got his professional start at the Nashville Tennessean as these "Children" of the book were forming the SNCC and making history in America. I think of this book as the author's homage to those only slightly younger black students who he studied as a young reporter some 40 years earlier than when this book was written. Despite having already having read literally dozens of books on the struggle for civil rights in America, I still found this book highly rewarding. ( )

For anyone who is either fascinated with the Civil Rights Movement in 1960s America or just the idea of civil disobedience and/or social change in general, I recommend this book. It was required reading for me in a colloquium entitled "The Life & Times of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." What was interesting to me is that it was my favorite book from that seminar, even though it was the one that dealt least specifically with MLK, Jr. himself.

Halberstam's focus is on the youth of the movement - college students who were around his own age at the time - and the steps they took in the fight for equality. The story is one of hope and inspiration, helping one to realize that if these young people could stand up for what they believed in and make a difference, there's no reason that any of the rest of us can't be bothered to do something similar. It also helps to remind us that while it is easy to look back on the past and think only of the great things that came from it, real people were and are involved in these struggles - and that's something we should never forget. ( )

I got this book from freerreading when looking for books about the Civil Rights Movement. This book tells the story of the sit-in movement in Nashville, Tennessee by the college students at the black colleges in that area in 1960. A well-written and informative book. Really enjoyed hearing about the student's experiences in the sit-ins and the othe Civil Rights campaigns and what happened to them after the 1960's. This is the second book I have read by this author and have really enjoyed both of his books. He is a good writer and I have learned quite a bit by reading his books. ( )

Excellent civil rights history and relationships.. ( )

If lesson number one had been that their numbers were not small because their idea was powerful, then lesson number two was about shedding the most powerful of all feelings — the shame of being black in a white nation which had chosen, as it suppressed its black citizens, to create a philosophy of shame and vulnerability among the very people whom it had suppressed and exploited, saying in effect that it was the victim's fault for turning out to be the victim.

This is a masterful overview of The Movement, as the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s came to be known. Halberstam astutely focuses on a group of college students in Nashville who formed the backbone of what became the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and pushed the older, more conservative Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) into challenging segregation with direct action, beginning with lunch-counter sit-ins and ending with the bloody March to Montgomery and voter registration drives across the Deep South.

Many of The Movement's most well-known names got their start in the Nashville group — John Lewis, Marion Barry and James Bevel among them. But Halberstam also shines a light on activists who were lesser-known or completely unknown to me, showing how essential they were to the ultimate success of the struggle. He interweaves chapters exploring the backgrounds of each of these disparate characters and how they came to be in Nashville with direct reporting on the actions they took and the reactions of the white establishment. His writing brought home the very real physical danger that they all faced, and the constant indignities and humiliations that were visited upon them simply for believing themselves to be equal to whites:

It was a bitter evening for both of them. One of the waitresses had come over and said that they did not serve niggers, and when they still did not leave, she returned and poured milk on both of them, and when they still did not leave, she returned one more time and poured hot tea on them. Then, as if to top it off, one of the other employees went in the kitchen and returned with a container of Ajax and poured it on both of them. Then the police came and arrested them both. It was a moment when Gloria Johnson felt an overpowering sense of sadness, not about herself, or about the others who were protesting with her, but instead about the city and the country. Here were the two of them, she thought, graduates of an uncommonly good college, now on their way to becoming doctors, trying to order simple meals in what was not a very fancy restaurant, and being abused and then arrested for it. She wept that day, for her country, not for herself.

One of the most valuable takeaways for me from this book is the reminder that African-American culture is not and never has been a monolith. The activists in the book come from a variety of backgrounds, from financially secure to desperately poor, from the Deep South of Mississippi and Alabama to northern cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. By continuing the book beyond the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — really the signature achievement of The Movement — Halberstam shows how black activism experienced a schism of its own, between those whose ultimate goal was full integration into society and those who advocated for black power and separating themselves from whites. As he follows many of the activists from their 20s into their 50s and beyond, he also shows how their time in The Movement affected them all profoundly even as they moved into the next phases of their lives. Many struggled with depression as they tried to find some other cause or pursuit that would mean as much to them as the civil rights struggle had.

Reading this book in 2017, as voting rights are once again under attack across the country (including right here in Iowa), I find myself filled with fresh determination that the gains those activists fought so hard to achieve must not be conceded without a fight. The stories Halberstam tells in The Children filled me with awe at a group of young people who faced incredible danger and violence — not fearlessly like superheroes, but with fearful conviction in the rightness of their cause, like flawed but focused human beings. ( )