FREEDOM'S CHILDREN Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own Stories. By Ellen Levine. Illustrated. 167 pp. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. $16.95. (Ages 12 and up) MISSISSIPPI CHALLENGE By Mildred Pitts Walter. Illustrated. 205 pp. New York: Bradbury Press. $18.95. (Ages 11 and up)
THE first decade of the civil rights movement in the American South, from the Supreme Court's school desegregation decision in 1954 to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, was an extraordinary time in American history. Celebrations, dedications, books, posters, television specials and series, and of course the memories of their parents and grandparents have made the stories and sacrifices of that period vivid to youngsters. Still, the history bears telling again and again, and both Ellen Levine's thrilling "Freedom's Children: Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own Stories" and Mildred Pitts Walter's "Mississipi Challenge" make signficant contributions.
"Freedom's Children" is nothing short of wonderful. It describes the civil rights movement episodically and chronologically through the experiences of 30 black Americans who were children and teen-agers in that period. Ellen Levine, an attorney and writer, found her interview subjects by calling "churches, community groups, someone's aunt or cousin, anyone or any group I could find."
Clearly written and beautifully constructed, her book interweaves a strong, forward-moving narrative of significant events with the personal accounts. This technique, together with photographs of the interviewees taken when they were young and short biographical sketches of all of them at the end of the book, makes the movement vivid.
What sets "Freedom's Children" apart is all the particular human detail. Roy DeBerry remembers pedaling his grandmother's sewing machine because she had no electricity; Ricky Shuttlesworth remembers recognizing herself as a "P.K." -- a preacher's kid. The traumas and sacrifices are caught in personal incident. Frances Foster says: "I remember my first demonstration. It was eight days after my 14th birthday. I had on the clothes I got for my birthday that year. My aunt saw me on television and she told my mother. . . . I went to the luncheonette on the mezzanine and sat down."
Gwendolyn Patton tells how, after the Freedom Riders came to Montgomery, "I brought some of them back to my Aunt Chick's house. . . . She was just outraged. She said, 'Gwendolyn, come to the kitchen with me.' Then she said, 'You have white people in there.' I said, 'Yes ma'am, I do. They're the Freedom Riders.' She said, 'I'm going to tell you, I don't want them in my house. . . . I cannot go in their homes, and I don't want them in my home.' "
After the disappearance of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman in Mississippi in 1964, John Steele remembers: "Just before they found those bodies, it rained, lightning, electrical storms for weeks and weeks, night and day. My mama said, 'It's the Lord. That's those boys' blood crying.' And shortly after that, they were found."
These young people believed in change and their ability to effect it. As Ernest Green says, "If given the opportunity, you'd be surprised at how much you can do, how much you can achieve."
In "Mississippi Challenge," Mildred Pitts Walter places much emphasis on the formation and working of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the voter registration drive. Her narrative also reaches back into the 19th century and the development of a slave society and an economy built on cotton.
There is the feel of a history text: chapters with subchapters, a relatively simple linear structure, one fact or event building on another as Ms. Walter guides the reader through the Civil War, the Freedman's Bureau, the era of the "white death" (mob lynchings) and the unsuccessful fight of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to be seated at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. The book also provides clear, simple definitions of terms like "sharecropper," "tenant farmer," and "black codes."
"Freedom's Children" and "Mississippi Challenge" show that freedom for blacks didn't just drop from the sky; it required careful prodding, forceful pulling and costly sacrifice from many active, committed people. That is important to remember in this era of MTV and myriad cable channels that require nothing of us but an active thumb on the remote control.