Rebirth on Campus

IT WAS A CHILLY FRIDAY AFTERNOON IN early February, and a group of young activists huddled around a table inside a modern, earthy café in Atlanta’s West End neighborhood, planning their next moves. Already, the group had worked to combat school privatization in the city. They had also plotted “school-to-activism pipelines” for local kids. The cause at hand now was a new stadium, and how to mitigate its financial impact on the longtime residents of a black community in its shadow.

None of it could be called schoolwork, yet it was exactly what Eva Dickerson aspired to three years ago when she chose to attend nearby Spelman College. The four-year women’s school is one of the country’s highest-ranked historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), a community of 101 schools that, as a group, have reemerged as centers of youth activism in the U.S. As with Dickerson herself, the transition has come in stages.

The college junior was 16 years old when Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012. Her senior year in high school, she attended her first protests, in