Hayden Roberts

March 18th, 2017

Crystal R. Sanders, A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi’s Black Freedom

Struggle, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016)

Crystal R. Sanders' work in A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi's Black

Freedom Struggle, tells the story of how African American women worked alongside the United

States government to create the Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM) in 1965. This

program gave young African American children a better opportunity to gain an education and

better themselves, while also giving African American women a chance to prove themselves on

the political activism stage. This is crucial to the African American community during this time,

due to the extreme growth in tension during the civil rights movement. Crystal R. Sanders

immediately portrayed the ideas of her book in the introduction section of her story, by stating

the words of Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and former sharecropper Fannie Lou

Hamer. Sanders writes that Hamer claimed, "We have to build our own power. The question for

black people is not, when is the white man going to give us our rights, or when he is going to

give us good education for our children. We have to take [rights] for ourselves." (Page 2 of

introduction)

The book delves deep into the creation of the Child Development Group of Mississippi

and the creators behind it. African American women pushed hard to get the program started, so

that they could get not only a better life for their children, but also for themselves. The story

takes place during the heat of segregation in the south, creating a lot of tension, as the women
pushed for regulation. Creation of the Child Development Group of Mississippi gave not only

the children of Mississippi a better life, but also the African American women. They were able to

leave their domestic lifestyles behind so that they could go teach children or become workers of

the Child Development Group of Mississippi. This gave this previously unrepresented group of

people a voice in not only their communities, but also on the state government level. Being

employed by a group that was not controlled by white people gave the women confidence to

fight for what they believed was right, without fear of losing their jobs. The women continued to

push the boundaries, like not many African American women before them had done before,

causing much disruption among local and state leaders who were trying to keep the segregated

way of life intact. This eventually caused the state government to opt not to fund the Child

Development Group of Mississippi anymore. Although funding for the program stopped, the

work those African American women did lived on throughout the remainder of the civil rights

movement and throughout history; forever leaving a mark on the lives of not only the children

they were teaching, but the entire African American community who saw the work they were

doing and the fight they were fighting.

It is made evident that Crystal R. Sanders compiled an enormous amount of reading and

studies to compile this story. Sanders does an excellent job portraying the events from not only

the start of the creation of the Child Development Group of Mississippi, but well before it and

after the defunding of it. She goes on to explain the state of education in the state, before the

CDGM, and what areas were affected the most. In the first chapter, Sander sets the stage of the

political and educational set of Mississippi in the early 1960's. As she continues through her

writings, she describes the lives of specific players in the role of initiating the Child

Development Group of Mississippi. It is made apparent that Sanders made great strides in her
attempts at research to gain the knowledge necessary to compile these stories. Not only does she

write about the accounts of the African American women who helped start the CDGM through

the Head Start program, she writes about the backlash and views of the Mississippi government

both local and state. In chapter four she highlights how the Mississippi state government was

against any act involving equal opportunity for African Americans. Sanders wrote, "Most white

Mississippians opposed CDGM and the entire War on Poverty. Every member of Mississippi’s

congressional delegation had voted against the Economic Opportunity Act."(page 8 of chapter 4)

Sanders does an excellent job compiling her research of both personal accounts, and government

records pertaining to congressional votes and comments made by government officials. Sanders

did an excellent job closing the story with an affective epilogue. In the epilogue she goes on to

say how even though the CDGM was revoked of its funding, the effects of it lived on in the years

to come. She uses research such as stats of percentages of national poverty level to show that

there was a drastic improvement following the years of the civil rights movement.

Sanders work in A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi's Black Freedom

Struggle, is a tightly woven account of the life of the Child Development Group of Mississippi

and the brave people who made it possible. Sanders writings convey the story effectively from

beginning to end with no noticeable gaps in research or storytelling. Her arguments are conveyed

in an organized and effective manner, making it clear that she believes that the Child

Development Group of Mississippi was one of the first big steps to larger strides regarding the

civil rights movement. Sanders affectively ends the story with a message of hope. She states that

the work those people did not only helped those immediately effected by the program, but the

entire African American community of the South. She writes in the epilogue, "By the 1970s, the

poverty rate in the United States had been cut in half. 2 CDGM was successful in improving the
standard of living of a sizable number of black Mississippians." Sanders wanted to tell the story

of the brave women who gave the African American community of Mississippi new life through

education and bettering of themselves, and she did so in a well-organized, well researched and

meaningful way.