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The battle for racial equality in education came at a cost to Black Americans during the civil rights era. In 1964, fourteen-year-old June Manning Thomas walked into Orangeburg High School as one of thirteen Black students selected to integrate the all-white school, while her classmates mocked, shunned, and yelled racial epithets at her and other Black students. That period was the latest stage of a long struggle to ensure basic education for people of all races, and to provide physical, emotional, and spiritual sustenance for Black children in the legally segregated South. In Struggling to Learn, Thomas offers an intimate look at how the Black community educated its children in spite of oppression, and how fledgling alliances of Blacks and white allies built a constructive vision of a better multiracial society in spite of entrenched opposition.