The summer of 1964 had been Freedom Summer for a few campuses. 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. Harassed by police for being in a white neighborhood with a black coworker, arrested for vagrancy, and prevented from driving by arcane residency laws, Reavis came to understand the frustration with The System that fueled the Civil Rights Movement. At the same time, he saw the infighting and strategizing within the Movement that prevented it from living up to his ideals. In the end, he concludes, The System made some concessions to our protests, but its power was never trumped. . . .