The story of activist youth in America is usually framed around the Vietnam War, the counterculture, and college campuses, focusing primarily on college students in the 1960s and 1970s. But a remarkably effective tradition of Black high school student activism in the civil rights era has gone understudied.
In 1951, students at R. R. Moton High School in rural Virginia led a student walkout and contacted the law firm of Hill, Martin, and Robinson...