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What really became of the student activists who helped define the civil rights era—and what does their story tell us about race, protests, and political commitment in America?
1994 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
In Ideal Citizens, James J. Fendrich offers a bracing corrective to the familiar, white-washed mythology of the 1960s. Grounded in rare longitudinal research, this book traces the lives of Black and white college students who participated in civil rights activism—and those who did not—from the heat of the movement into the political realities of the decades that followed. Beginning with the Black student sit-ins that helped launch the era, Fendrich shows that Black students were not only central to the movement but participated at higher rates than their white counterparts, challenging long-standing assumptions about who drove social change.
Most strikingly, Ideal Citizens dismantles the "Big Chill" thesis—the notion that activists ultimately abandoned their ideals. Instead, Fendrich reveals a generation that, though often marginalized in an increasingly conservative political landscape, remained personally empowered, politically engaged, and deeply committed to democratic ideals long after the protests ended.
A study of race, activism, and political life, Ideal Citizens is essential reading for scholars and students of social movements, sociology, and civil rights history, and for anyone seeking to understand how protest reshapes lives long after the marches are over.
"Fendrich's book represents an invaluable corrective to the tendency to view the 'sixties experience' as synonymous with the lives of white college students. Not only did the era begin with the black student sit-in movement, but a far larger percentage of black college students participated in some form of protest activity than did their white student counterparts. The book is also unique for the empirical comparison it affords of the past and present lives of white and black activists. Finally, Ideal Citizens is important for the lie it makes of the so-called Big Chill thesis. As Fendrich's study makes clear, far from selling out, the majority of those who took part in the movement in Tallahassee have remained politically active and true to the ideals they espoused some thirty years ago." — Doug McAdam, author of Freedom Summer and Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970.
"This book does far more than trace the social and political careers of black and white student civil rights activists and their nonactivist counterparts over a quarter of a century. In a brilliant but at times painful conclusion, Fendrich analyzes both the importance and the relative powerlessness of these activists in an era of political conservatism. Personally empowered by their early experiences, they have continued to struggle to extend democracy, even though neither of the national parties espouses the ideals they still cherish. This volume is a signal contribution to the study of social movements." — Lewis M. Killian, author of Impossible Revolution, Phase II
"This research fills an important gap in our knowledge and understanding of the civil rights movement on college campuses and the consequences for the activists. Those who read it seriously will have some of the favorite myths about activists destroyed. The author has made an important contribution to the sociology of social movements and to race relations research and theory. I think this will be a very important book." — Edgar G. Epps, University of Chicago
Tables
Acknowledgments
Prologue: Misconceptions about Civil Rights Activists
1. The Civil Rights Movement: The River of Baptism
2. Tracking the Civil Rights Activists: How the Research Was Done
3. The Black Protest Generation in the 1970s and 1980s
4. The Divergent Politics of the White Generation
5. African American and White Activists Twenty-Five Years Later
6. Conclusion: Taking Stock
Epilogue: Current Dilemmas and Future Prospects
Appendix
Notes
References
Index