The Children

by David Halberstam

Lafayette was to talk at first not so much about voting rights as about citizenship, and then, gradually, about constitutional rights, and why people in the black community had to move ahead, not just for themselves, but on behalf of those who were to come after, Lewis said. He was to talk about their children’s lives—to remind them that they had an obligation on behalf of the young. If Lafayette did this well, and did not bluster, if he listened to them as much as he talked to them, then, said Lewis, at each meeting there would almost surely be two and perhaps three people who would be willing to become involved. They would thereupon be willing to hold comparable meetings at their homes, and use their influence with their friends. That way his influence would constantly be expanding, and in that way as well, he would be quietly growing roots into the community without the danger of a mass meeting, which might backfire and trigger a violent backlash among the whites. In addition he would subtly be blending into the landscape; he would bear less and less the taint of someone from the outside, who might disappear whenever it suited him.