The following is an excerpt from A New Kind of Youth: Historically Black High Schools and Southern Student Activism, 1920–1975 by Jon N. Hale, available now wherever books are sold. The Construction of Youth and the Rise of the Black High School Though often overshadowed by the work of Black colleges or Black churches, southern Black high schools were an integral part of the southern freedom struggle alongside these recognized pillars of Black resistance. The Black high school followed modern constructs of youth and childhood during the first decades of the twentieth century. The conceptual...