In early nineteenth-century Boston, African American children and youth faced severe educational inequalities and inequities in the city's racially segregated public school system. In response, Robert Morris and other African American youth organized for change. This article traces their organizing efforts, from establishing a literary society to petitioning the Massachusetts state legislature. Their collective work resulted in the overthrow of racially segregated public schools in Boston in 1855.

Historians have examined how social movements influenced African American student activism in mid-to-late twentieth century America. This essay extends the scholarship by telling the story of African American male student activists who led the fight for curricular reform at Amherst College, then an all-male liberal arts college in Massachusetts. This local story reveals that African American student activism was driven by social movements as well as the distinctive mission of the liberal arts college.