But children have been far more than just pawns in American political history. During the civil rights movement, their political activism ranged from Ruby Bridges’s courageous entrance into a segregated school to the young participants in the Southern Christian Leadership Council’s Birmingham campaign.

Young Americans also led movements against the Vietnam War and in favor of greater autonomy for children, adolescents and college students. Thirteen-year-old Mary Beth Tinker and others protested the war by donning black armbands, an action that led the Supreme Court to affirm the First Amendment rights of public school students. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the decades-long drive to lower the voting age to 18 accelerated as young activists rejected the notion that they could fight and die in Vietnam yet could not vote for the politicians who decided to send them off to war.

This activism has continued into the 21st century. In 2006, tens of thousands of students in the Los Angeles Unified School District walked out of their high schools to protest a proposed draconian immigration bill. Mobilized by the slayings of teenagers Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown in 2012 and 2014 respectively, the #BlackLivesMatter movement has foregrounded the voices of young activists, especially those representing some of the nation’s most subjugated groups — including immigrants, people with disabilities, and women, queer and trans people of color. In the wake of the massacre at their high school last February, students from Parkland, Fla., have helped reshape the national discourse on gun violence.