What he said was prophetic, even if it wasn't popular. The nation was scandalized. While he wasn't aware of Carmichael's strategy when he decided to join a 1965 summer voter registration program, Dick J.Reavis felt it instinctively when he told his resistant father the reason he was going. Dad, if we live in a country where nobody pays attention when Negroes die, then I guess that's the way it has to be.
Somebody has to pay the price.
The price the white middle-class Texan paid when he spent a summer on the wrong side of the tracks in Demopolis, Alabama, was his innocence. If White Kids Die describes his gradual maturation as he encountered the other side of legally - enforced racism. At the same time, he saw the infighting and strategizing within the Movement that prevented it from living up to his ideals. These low-level functionaries and local activists are what we very much need to know more about. . . . It is also good to have a memoir of a white participant . . .