"High School Students Unite! Teen Action, Education Reform, and FBI Surveillance in Postwar America"

Event Description:

This event will feature Dr. Aaron G. Fountain, an independent scholar who is also a Winthrop University alum and McNair Scholar. It will focus on his new book; High School Students Unite! Teen Activism, Education Reform, and FBI Surveillance in Postwar America. While college activism of the 1960s and 1970s has been well documented, the equally critical contributions of high school students have often been overlooked. Fountain will explain how high school students, inspired by the civil rights and antiwar movements, spearheaded their own social movement. Through social networks of their own creation, students fought for constitutional rights on their campuses and for curricula changes that reflected their evolving worldviews. Such activism eventually attracted the attention of the FBI, which began surveilling high school students—sometimes at the behest of their parents.