Episode 2572: Robert H. Mayer ~ Talks Children Roles in Civil Rights, Award-Winning author of "When Children Marched" The Birmingham Civil Rights Movement & “In the Name of Emmett Till"

Best-Selling Author & Distinguished Carter G. Woodson book award presented to exemplary books written for children and young people each year at the NCSS Annual Conference.

My Show looks to the final day of Jubilee Remembrances 60th Anniversary 2025 in the South this Week. I consider it a Privilege to cover the True Foot Soldiers who were physically THERE during the Events that Changed History in American Civil Rights to All.

My Guest is author Robert H. Mayer author of the book "In the Name of Emmett Till"

The Movie "Till" premiered in the Fall 2022. It was a Box-Office Hit!

Emmett Till Antilynching Act is a United States landmark federal law which makes lynching a federal hate crime and signed into law on March 29, 2022, by President Joe Biden. The bill was named after 14-year-old Emmett Till, who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, sparking national and international outrage.

Children played a significant role in Birmingham’s crucial civil rights struggle, and this stirring history of the movement, with many photos, news reports, and quotes from all sides, emphasizes the connections between the young people’s power and that of the big leaders. Martin Luther King called Birmingham the most segregated city in America, and his Letter from Birmingham Jail is quoted at length. But when the adults’ protest lost momentum, the leaders’ decision to call on young people galvanized the movement--Hazel Rochman

Robert H. Mayer is the award-winning author of When the Children Marched: The Birmingham Civil Rights Movement and the editor of The Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a teacher, Mayer’s passion continues to be making history relevant and accessible to young people. His time spent in Jackson, Canton, and McComb, Mississippi, as well as meeting scholars and activists integral to the civil rights movement, fueled the desire to write In the Name of Emmett Till. He lives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, with his wife Jan, where he writes, teaches, and tutors youth in a local middle school.

The 1955 murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi is widely remembered as one of the most horrible lynching's in American history. African American children old enough that year to be aware personally felt the terror of Till’s murder. These children, however, would rise up against the culture that made Till’s death possible. Over the next decade, from the violent Woolworth’s lunch-counter sit-ins in Jackson to the school walkouts of McComb, the young people of Mississippi picketed, boycotted, organized, spoke out, and marched, determined to reveal the vulnerability of black bodies and the ugly nature of the world they lived in. These children changed that world.


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