Youth Involvement in Social Movements        

The Civil Rights Movement and Black Political Socialization by Morris, Hatchett and Brown is a very thorough analysis of the various factors affecting and supporting the civil rights movement.   Their research clearly shows that the movement had a definitive organizational component.It is also obvious that the emotional engagement of their followers and the establishment of a successful system of communication and education increased the movements vision and the impact on the community as well. The authors' emphasis on the central role of the youth in this movement, however, needs to be examined.  I would argue the youth involved were not necessarily central to the development of the movement and that their motivation for their involvement in the movement is directly related to their stage of life.  While the sheer numbers of black youth involved  is impressive, their impact on the movement itself is not clearly documented in the article.

            The youth involvement within the movement can be easily explained by the developmental life stage that the age group was experiencing.  The authors alluded to the research that shows that young adults' have a drive to develop an identity and form their own beliefs and thoughts.  Youth at this stage are also still battling between gaining an independent status and developing a niche for themselves in their community by creating new bonds with their family and/or community.  The author's concerns about the motivation for youth involvement are not necessarily well founded, however. 

In the studies dealing with the impact of settings and events, age was found to be an important correlate of activism and ideology.  The question which arises is, to what extent are differences found across age groups a result of young people being particularly receptive to new events and settings because of life cycle, or from birth cohorts coming of age in a particular period in history? (275) 

Those distinctions made by the authors are not easily divisible and perhaps in relation to the youth' s involvement, the distinction is not clearly apparent (even to the youth herself).  During that life stage there is an emphasis on both the experience of new things that help develop the youth's identity and the creation of a social niche with a group.

             I would also argue that young people across all cultures are searching for ways to be initiated into the adult community.  In many cultures this is done through a ceremony where the youth is recognized by the community as leaving child-like ways behind and entering the responsibility of being an adult.  American culture has not historically had obvious coming of age rituals, and American youth have constantly been creating events that serve that purpose.   During the 1960s, many youth were trying to create their own coming of age ceremonies while simultaneously making decisions about their own personal identity.  The civil rights movement not only filled that need for recognition of identity formation for the youth involved, it also offered a identity that guaranteed admittance into the adult population.

            As these various critiques of the author's argument has shown, while youth involvement in the civil rights movement is largely due to the life cycle of the youth involved, their centrality to the movement's ideology is not concretely documented. Perhaps by analyzing the involvement of youth in other social movements, a correlation can be made in relation to the impact of social movements in general, but an analysis based only on numbers does not provide enough information to make a generalized statement concerning the youth's impact on the movement.