This paper focuses on how shifting conceptions of youth underpinned young people's activism in the 1950s and 1960s. This paper specifically examines conceptions of youth as it changed throughout the twentieth century. G. Stanley Hall articulated a distinct notion of "adolescence" in the early twentieth century. But the "Scottsboro Boys," nine teenaged African Americans sentenced to death for purportedly raping two white women in 1931, challenged these conceptions of youth to be more inclusive of state protective services, including education. This research also examines the role of the NAACP Youth Council in organizing youth in schools. The intersection of conceptions of youth and the NAACP's organization of young people contextualizes the role of youth activism during the civil rights movement.