"Even Though I’m Not Old Enough”: Youth Advisors, US Politics, and the LBJ Administration, 1963–68

In his 1965 neatly typed letter to President Lyndon B. Johnson, white seventeen-year-old teen Robert Lee Utsey, Jr. from South Carolina addressed the president’s alleged violation of constitutional rights and urged him, “you can make yourself more popular with us though if you leave the Negroes alone, quit fighting for the repeal of the right-to-work-laws, adopt a winning attitude towards the war in Viet Nam, and get Federal [sic] registrars out of the South.” Between 1963 and 1968, political debates, publicized unrest in the South, Cold War conflicts and diplomatic relations politicized American teenagers’ daily life beyond the electorate. During the 1960s, children and teenagers turned to methods that reflected their youthfulness, resourcefulness, and convictions—bake sales, school debates, petitions, children’s organizations, and letter writing—and that informed political interpretations and their cultural engagement. Eckelmann argues that child and teenage correspondence functioned as political acts as well as technologies of political representation and cultural production as part of the everyday “business” of childhood. Through thousands of letters addressed to the president, children and teenagers themselves made visible the workings of their world while also exercising their rights as citizens. Childhood-specific vocabulary, metaphors, and agendas distinguished their correspondence from adult letters. Letter writing helped make teenage citizenship visible allowing youth to engage with the adult world on their own terms as youth “ambassadors” or “advisors.” With these texts, teenagers often forged a dialogue—real and imagined—between the world they knew and the adult world they observed. When youth engaged purposefully with adults, of their choosing, their competence became most apparent as they challenged, endorsed, or inquired the world around them. Young people’s actions and testimonies remind us that concerned and motivated members of the political community are often those excluded from the ballot box.