LIFE: Boy Scouts in tumult

Not originally published in LIFE. Boy Scout, Milwaukee, 1971. (John Shearer—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Click here to see the full collection at LIFE.com In its June 1971 issue, in which a handful of Shearer’s photographs first ran, LIFE made it plain that the Boy Scouts were at something of a crossroads at the dawn of the Seventies. In an article titled, “Scouting Blazes a Trail Into the Ghetto,” the magazine told its millions of ... more 

Not originally published in LIFE. Boy Scout, Milwaukee, 1971. (John Shearer—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Click here to see the full collection at LIFE.com In its June 1971 issue, in which a handful of Shearer’s photographs first ran, LIFE made it plain that the Boy Scouts were at something of a crossroads at the dawn of the Seventies. In an article titled, “Scouting Blazes a Trail Into the Ghetto,” the magazine told its millions of readers: The Boy Scouts of America marched into the 1960s still duty-bound to knot-tying, overnight hikes and helping little old ladies — and woefully out of step with a majority of the nation’s restive youth. They had no handbook solutions for the alienation of suburban boys or the hostility of ghetto kids to the traditionally white, middle-class scouting programs. Then, during the riotous summer of 1967 in Cincinnati’s Basin section, a Southern white Scout organizer unexpectedly appeared at the barricades. He risked snipers’ bullets to rescue injured blacks and mediated a peace between City Hall and the ghetto. Finally, he got permission or a militant street gang to sponsor three Scout troops, and recruited ghetto types — many of whom could not have repeated the Scouts’ Oath with a straight face — to help get things going. What might be called the radicalization of the Boy Scouts had begun. The Cincinnati experience became a watershed in the movement’s search for a new constituency. City boys now learn to read subway maps and less