'Children Of Crisis' By Robert Coles

In Robert Coles, “Children of Crisis,” Coles writes a descriptive recollection of a participant in the desegregation of Atlanta schools, while doing so Coles provides substantial amounts of evidence that illustrates the difficulty of the desegregation for Negro families. This essay was written to inform the reader of the difficulties and perseverance of the participants in the throes of the decline of segregation in southern schools while keeping the tone considerably light and positive. He begins this beautifully informative piece with a small insight into what schools were like just before the highly feared and anticipated desegregation, following by what happened leading up to the desegregation, and finally the outcome of the desegregation of an Atlanta school. Coles bases his information on historical facts as well as the firsthand account of a boy named John that was at the forefront of the desegregation of an …show more content…
Coles did an excellent job supporting and proving his ideas by citing historical facts as well as providing strong testimony from a participant with an accurate personal knowledge of the subject. One example of Coles subtly using a historical fact to support and to intensify the realities he was writing about was when he wrote, “John was particularly moved by his mother’s insistence that his generation was the first to be spared the worst of it—the constant possibility of lynching, the near-total lack of hope, the daily scorn that permitted no reply, no leeway.” With this quote Coles illustrated the severity of the times before desegregation (Coles, 328). Between 1182 and 1968, 4,743 lynching’s were documented in the United States, of this number 3,446 were Negro (Browner, The Charles Chesnutt digital archive). Along with his historical references, the personal experience recording by Coles gives the essay wonderful factual evidence and