America Street

""America Street" is the story of Brady Young, a young man from the West who comes of age in the South as a student at the College of Charleston. The book describes his journey. He feels angry and out of place in a college environment and a community that he sees as discriminatory and unjust, but learns through some hard lessons to channel his anger and take meaningful action to right the wrongs he sees. Brady Young's journey is one that shows social change is possible anywhere. Brady, an exceptionally smart and politically aware young man, protests what he sees as racial and social inequality around him by replacing the American flag with the Confederate flag at the College of Charleston's most revered place - Cistern Yard. He is caught in the act and must deal with the consequences. Brady faces jail time and expulsion from the college. But as he deals with his legal and academic problems, he comes to realize that his protest was meaningless in the absence of real action to effect change in the community. He is influenced by the black people he lives among on America Street in Charleston. Brady comes to see his own problems as minuscule in comparison with the decades of frustration and despair among the people he has befriended in his neighborhood. By founding an internet radio station and giving voice to the unheard voices of Charleston, Brady sparks a movement to raise the minimum wage in Charleston, but he is opposed by a the scion of a long-time Charleston family whose roots go back to the days of slavery in the South."