Charlayne Hunter-Gault: Don't Forget the Climb to the Mountaintop

Charlayne Hunter-Gault, a regular contributor to The Root, is the author of To the Mountaintop: My Journey Through the Civil Rights Movement, published by Roaring Brook Press and the New York Times Company.

...Recent studies in the U.S., for example, report that the younger generation's knowledge about even the civil rights movement of the 1960s -- let alone the generations-old history of black resistance to unjust laws designed to keep them "in their place" -- is practically non-existent. They might know about Martin Luther King Jr., and maybe Rosa Parks. But what about all the others who led President Barack Obama to say that he stood "on the shoulders of giants"?

The same is true of the younger generation in South Africa, whose members are referred to as the "born frees" (born after Nelson Mandela was released and became the country's first president who was elected by all the people). Many of the "born frees" in South Africa know the name Mandela, but they know the names of few others who walked beside him or blazed the trail for his long walk to freedom.

To address young Americans' lack of knowledge, I wrote To the Mountaintop: My Journey Through the Civil Rights Movement for young readers -- ninth grade though college -- based on my own experience as one of two students to desegregate the University of Georgia, as well as my subsequent journey through the civil rights era. The title was inspired by the enduring and prescient speech Dr. King gave in Memphis, Tenn., on April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated. He was encouraging the striking sanitation workers who had brought him there, telling them there would be "some difficult days ahead," but that he had "been to the mountaintop," had "seen the promised land," that "we, as a people, will get to the promised land."...