If We Could Change the World

Rebecca de Schweinitz offers a new perspective on the civil rights movement by bringing children and youth to the fore. In the first book to connect young people and shifting ideas about children and youth with the black freedom struggle, de Schweinitz explains how popular ideas about youth and young people themselves--both black and white--influenced the long history of the movement. "If We Could Change the World" brings out the voices and experiences of participants who are rarely heard. Here, familiar events from the black freedom struggle are examined in new ways, and the explanations and motivations for getting involved and taking action are told, often in the words of young people themselves. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, de Schweinitz argues that examining historical constructions of childhood and the roles children have played in history changes the way one understands the past. With de Schweinitz's analysis, young people--elementary age, adolescent, and young adult--take their place as significant historical and political actors in the black freedom struggle.