Student Activism, K-12

Activism can take many forms. It may consist of writing a letter to one's representative in government, participating in a protest march, staging a hunger strike, or remaining silent for a day in support of a cause. Activism can be fighting for one's rights or the rights of one's group, or may be an attempt to redress wrongs, and usually is connected to political and social issues that one or more groups consider oppressive. Activists not only work for the welfare of human beings but may also support rights of animals or the environment. Even if activism does not succeed in making changes, it often brings attention to an issue that has been ignored.

Although often associated with adult action, children, worldwide and throughout history, have initiated and participated in activism. They have organized strikes that have changed their lives and changed their communities. They have engaged in letter-writing campaigns that have changed laws. They have participated in demonstrations that would have been less successful without their presence. Many child activists have grown up to be adult activists.

The cotton mills in Paterson, New Jersey, are recorded as being the site of the first labor strike by children in the [Page 1345]United States. In 1828 children, who worked 13½ hours a day, walked out when mill owners changed the lunch hour from noon to one o'clock. The 3-week strike resulted in the lunch hour being changed back, but it was not successful in reducing the workday to 10 hours. Once work resumed, mill owners fired the strike leaders.

Butler University junior Kenneth DeGraff, right, hands out information cards for the Day of Silence project to students on the Butler campus on April 10, 2002, in Indianapolis. The Day of Silence project is a national youth movement protesting the harassment of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

Source: AP Photo/John Harrell.

Lowell, Massachusetts, was established as a textile industrial center in the early 1800s. The many factories there employed many women and girls of all ages to work long hours for little pay. When Harriet Hanson was 10 years old, she quit school to work in a cotton mill to help support her widowed mother and family. In 1836, at age 11, she led a group of spinners out on strike to protest the condition in the mills.

Not all children's work in the 1800s was in mills. Many boys bought newspapers to sell on the streets. In 1899 William Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, who owned two of the largest newspapers in New York, raised the price the boys had to pay for their papers, but did not allow them to raise the price they charged their customers. After a 2-week strike, the newsboys [Page 1346]gained a partial victory. The wholesale price remained the same, but the boys would receive refunds on any unsold papers.

Although much of the children's activism that is chronicled relates to labor issues, some strikes and protests are ideological. At the turn of the 20th century, Wrzesnia, a small town in western Poland, was under German occupation. Although most children spoke Polish at home, schooling was conducted in German, except for religion classes, which were conducted in Polish. In an attempt to wipe out the last vestiges of Polish in schools, German officials decreed that all subjects, including religion, must be taught in German. Students and their families were outraged, but the German officials would not budge. The students staged a strike that lasted a year and a half. During that time some were imprisoned and beaten, and fathers lost their jobs. Despite these punishments, the children remained on strike. Finally, Henryk Siekiewicz and other Polish writers who were in exile in France during this period heard about the strike. They brought the trials of these children to the world's attention and the Germans finally backed down.

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