On May 2, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Reverend Abernathy, and Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth lead a protest march in Birmingham, Alabama. This was no ordinary protest march. It was a protest march of schoolchildren.
Martn Luther King. This was a work for hire by a photographer for US News & World Report but was later transferred to the Library of Congress. As such, it is in the public domain.
At that time, Birmingham was one of the most racially segregated cities in the U.S.
The march was the culmination of several weeks' previous activities. The march and protest itself lasted several weeks, into most of May.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference helped organize the march, which consisted mainly of children younger than 18 years of age, known as the Children's Crusade.
More than 1,200 students skipped school that day to join the march at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, where they were given instructions to march downdown and integrate selected buildings, then to leave in smaller groups and continue until they were arrested.
I cannot imagine the horror of asking children to do this.
By the end of the day, more than 1,200 students were arrested, with the youngest reported as being eight years of age. Many sang "We Shall Overcome." Yep, this means pretty much everybody was arrested. The jails were packed beyond belief.
Then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy criticized the decision to use children for this protest, saying:
"an injured, mained, or dead child is a price that none of us can afford to pay."
King had been silent at first and then out of town when the march was organized, understood the succes, and said at a meeting later that evening:
"I have been inspired and moved by today. I have never seen anything like it."
One man, Wyatt Tee Walker was initially against using children in demonstrations, he later stated:
"Negro children will get a better education in five days in jail than in five months in a segregated school."
One aim of the march was to fill the prisons with students in an effort to embarrass Birmingham city officials.
Protestors were met with policemen and dogs.
Birmingham Police Chief Eugene "Bull"Connor arrested the student protestors; within days, the police attacked protestors with billy clubs, fire hoses and police dogs.
Children protestors in Birmingham sprayed with water hoses by police. Image: Charles Moore, Black Star Photo Agency, fair use, low resolution image, historical import
Many who joined the march in Birmingham were beaten or killed. News of this on TV incited many Northerners to march.
King, Abernathy and Shuttlesworth were jailed.
King was held in solitary confinement for three days, during which time he wrote Letter from Birmingham Jail, about the necessity of non-violence as resistance to unjust laws.
On May 4th, Chief Connor ordered police and firemen to forcefully instill order in the protestors, but the police and firemen refused.
Negotiations were under way for public facilities such as water fountains, to be integrated within the next 90 days.
When the Ku Klux Klan heard of this impending integration, riots began.
The KKK firebombed the Gaston Motel where most protestors were staying
and JFK was forced to call in federal troops to quell the riots and reinstate order.
I cannot imagine the horror of living in a society that was so bad that the best way to create change was to have 1,200 children protest and put their life in danger. Yet that was the case.
* * *
The Sixties is a continuing series I posted originally in 2006 on Gather. It has been since revised.
It discusses certain events that were in the news during the 1960s, in chronological order.
I will be publishing this series three times a week, from January, 2008until it finishes.
* * *
Writing is a form of Activism.
You can join my group, The Renewed Activist.
Join my group, The Sixties.
You can join Tom Brokaw's group,Boom!
Previous articles in The Sixties series:
The Sixties: Cuba After Castro, A Sidebar (10)
The Sixties: Early Stirrings - The Cuban Missile Crisis - 14 Days in October, 1962 (9)
The Sixties: Early Stirrings - Sentencing of the Bay of Pigs Invaders (8)
The Sixties: Early Stirrings - The Cuban Trade Embargo - No More Cuban Cigars (7)
The Sixties: Early Stirrings, November 14, 1961 - 16,000 Advisors Sent to Vietnam (6)
The Sixties: Early Stirrings - The Bay of Pigs Invasion (4)
The Sixties: Early Stirrings - JFK Elected President (3)
The Sixties: Early Stirrings - Martin Luther King is Jailed (2)
The Sixties: Early Stirrings - Lunch Counters (1)
The Sixties: Rosa Parks and her effect on Ruby Bridges - (prequel)
Previous Boom! articles:
My review of Tom Brokaw's book:
Boom! Voices of The Sixties: Personal reflections on the 60s and Today
Other Boom! articles:
Copyright © 2006, 2007, 2008 Kathryn Esplin-Oleski
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Comments: 93
It is sad because the situation was so bad that organizers deemed it politically necessary to create a protest in this way, using children. We are of a different mind set now about children and try to protect them in every way we can.
However, we often fail miserably at that.
I doubt strongly if anyone would organize a protest now using children, in which arrests were expected.
Let us hope we have moved beyond this in terms of civil rights. There is still a lot of racism going on but let us work to try to eradicate it.
This moving chronicle brought to mind Langston Hughes´great poem I, Too.
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I´ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody´ll dare
Say to me,
¨Eat in the kitchen,¨
Then.
Besides,
They´ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--
I, too, am America.
LANGSTON HUGHES
John F. Walter, that is one of my favorite poems.
Her example, alone, is enough to show that racial discrimination was and is a crime of monstrous proportions. She showed her superiority to all those who tried to defeat her.
But then, perhaps I am biased. I am so white that I can't tan. I am northern European by ancestry. My grandfather was a Methodist minister in a small town. The white members of that crowd brought shame on having a pale skin. They embarassed those of the Protestant faith. They made "northern European" an insult. They offended me.
we had slavery in this country in 1860's
and social slavery in 1960's
RIGHT ON TIME 4 BHM, BUT ALSO AS OTHERS HAVE STATED, RIGHT ON TIME 4 A PIECE OF AMERICAN HISTORY!
TRUE BUT SAD!
THANK U.
AND AS IRONIC AS IT MAY SEEM, I WAS JUST THINKING LAST NIGHT, "WOW. BHM AND I HAVENT POSTED ANY BLACK HISTORY ON GATHER."
WELL, THAT IS BECAUSE TO ME, THE HISTORY IS ALL DAY EVERY DAY. AND WHEN I FEEL COMPELLED TO SHARE MY KNOWLEDGE OF SUCH HISTORY, WHETHER IT BE BHM, UNE, PRESIDENTS DAY, HALLOWEEN, I DO IT THEN.
I WILL NOT FORCE MY WAY OF LIFE OR MY OPINION AND VIEWS OF ANY PARTICULAR SUBJECT BECAUSE IT IS THE MONTH.
SO WITH THAT BEING SAID, IF U SEE A POST NEXT MONTH OR THEREAFTER ABOUT SOME GREAT PERSON THAT JUST HAPPENS TO BE BLACK, IT'S JUST AN ARTICLE. AS IS KATHRYN'S!
BUT IM SURE WE HAVE THE SAME GOAL IN MIND.
TO TEACH THE PEOPLE.
BECAUSE WHY???
"A MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE."
AND WHAT ELSE???
I NEVER MIND GETTING WASTED!
THANKS K!
10 4 u
Thanks for the reminder. Look how far we've come. And to think without this would it have happened at all? Maybe later in the years but I don't know for sure. He was a very brave man.
ward off or deceive affronts of hostility, especially, in war, when they become the immediate targets or activated bombs for some psychopathic struggle for hierarchal righs to others' enslavement, that lock into the most perverse forms of manipulation....I have no words truly for how much I quietly seethe and cry for the unecessary torture.
This is a beautifully written piece and I am thrilled to be able to re-visit the series and waken again....to the 60's....and so much more than has sculpted our pathways to "now".
I was a child during this time also and still in awe of 'authority'. Perhaps had I been an African American child there would have been little to respect. Certainly the Birmingham chief and the KKK would have seemed like villains from a horror movie.
LRS: Thank you.
Tom: That may be; I will check, thank you.
John F W: Thank you for bringing to light Langston Hughes; a poet my mother introduced me too, but it has been a long time since I've read him.
I want to note, too, that "A Raisin in the Sun" will be aired on ABC on February 25. This is based on Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning 1959 play of the same name. In about 1962, I saw this play performed in Salt Lake's Westminster College. I was moved beyond tears. The title is from Langston Hughes' words that a deferred dream dries up like a raisin in the sun.
Laura: your words: "The disgust I feel for all adult forces who use children to
ward off or deceive affronts of hostility, especially, in war, when they become the immediate targets or activated bombs for some psychopathic struggle for hierarchal rights to others' enslavement, that lock into the most perverse forms of manipulation....I have no words truly for how much I quietly seethe and cry for the unnecessary torture."
Every time I read on the injustices that were dealt with in the 60s, I am angered that we have not come as far as many would have hoped.
Larry: Life is not all roses for those of us who are Northern European; I am British, but it is much easier for Caucasians than for non-Caucasians.
SALIEK: Thank you for enjoying. Vicky, Billie, Nyotu, thank you.
Elizabeth: I saw a terrific but horrible movie about the KKK around the same time, 1963, called The Cardinal, directed by a pen name used by Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted during the 50s McCarthy witch hunt era.
Ruthe: We should never forget.
Thank you, Jean, Cheryl, Renda.
They could get a good fight out of Irish Catholics, and that's part of what they wanted, that adrenaline rush and contact. They disrupted church services, and they chased children home from school on horses, swinging chains. A Catholic grandmother came out of her house and threw boiling water toward the horses to protect her children.
Subsequent research showed that KKK motivations were varied. One of the motivations was greed. They wanted to sell sheets, which were very expensive at that time, and other paraphernalia.
They also feared that children in Catholic schools would refuse to fight in wars. A part of their crusade was to close any school other than public. Episcopalians and even a military academy joined them in the lawsuit that went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled against the KKK, whose ideas had been pursued by a governor sympathetic to their cause. While government-school-only proponents try to put down private schools, even now, they have to harm independent schools economically or with public-relations crusades. Legally putting them out of business has been off the table since this lawsuit in the 20's.
A mayor in Curitiba, Brazil, used children to ban cars in the center of town. He did it on a weekend by putting children and art on the streets where the automobile association had threatened to stop his plan to turn downtown into a traditional plaza.
The mayor was successful, and now the plaza is heavily used by pedestrians. Merchants there reportedly have more business than they had before.
Anyone interested in this can Google Curitiba, an interesting place, profiled by Bill McKibben on NPR and in a book.
A child alone is more endangered than a child in a group working to make constructive change for his or her community, in my judgment. It is especially empowering for children to be part of making changes that make things safer for themselves and other populations that could be fragile or in danger of isolation.
Thanks for this posting. The erosion of rights and political input for marginalized populations make it likely that children will be involved in protests again, against things like the use of biocides and the siting of liquified-natural-gas facilities, for example.
Protests of eminent domain using children are already happening in Oregon now.
Dan: I did not know any of that about you. Thank you for sharing. You are right to be proud.
Thank you all. Another one in a few days. There will be about 40 to 50 in all. 24 are done so far.
I have a cousin my age who lives in middle TN and in talking to him one day, he told me that "we have a lot of trouble with niggers here". I knew his way of thinking, and yet it caught me off guard. My reply was that in my travels I have seen a lot of "white niggers" too. I am not sure if he got my gist.
I am certain race is an issue still in the South.
Thank you Webduck.
Thank you Pam.
Thank You for bringing back some memories that were both wonderful and painful for me. I am a child who lived through the civil rights era. I marched down Woodward Ave. in Detroit holding my mothers hand to Cobo Hall to hear Martin Lurther King. This was where he frist gave a preview of his I Have a Dteam speech. My mother risked loosing her job when we opennly and proudly took that march. I am very sad today that so many don't remember or care what we went through to reach where we are now. And I am not talking about the other race's but my own black people. But I also feel sad that our young people don't read and understand what the Jew's went through. Or the men that fought in the wars that are the reason they are still free. I hope that they will not have to face these issue's frist hand. As someone try's to steal the freedom's this country has so long believed in.
thank you!
I did not know much about this at the time. The early 60s were largely not well understood by me at the time, as I was not yet a teen. The later 60s were well lived by me.
During this time, I remember marching myself, here in my little town. They were peaceful marches, nothing like what happened in the South, but nevertheless I was 11 years old in 1963. During the Civil Rights Movement, I participated in many marches here in Ohio, but all were peaceful. The town that I'm from is known for having peaceful demonstrations. People here, black, white, or mixed, all came together to demonstrate peacefully.
I could never have imagined living in the South and going through what they did! As a matter of fact, I was terrified of the South!
I remember that it was illegal for a black man to take a white woman across the state line...when my father remarried, he married a white woman, and when traveling it was always a concern!
Thank you again Kathryn for bringing up these thought provoking issues!
I was not aware of that. How very sad. A thought provoking article it was, thank you!
It's no wonder they didn't tell us about this in school, public schools didn't want to put any ideas in our heads.
thank you, Jamie, Nina, Susan, Constance, Ellen, Ness.
I knew a little about it but this filled in the gaps.
I love to read just about anything that has to do with history.
Let me remind you that in the Bible the prophet Jeremiah was only a teenager when he marched for peace with his life hanging in the balance at every interval. In the New Testament Philip had 4 teen daughters who were prophetesses who risked their lives for Christianity as well.
Thus, a children's crusade has biblical sanction.
Thank you, Patti.
For me Black History Month just puts a topping on what I usually do 24/7.
So folks, when you read all the horror stories that actually did happen, please remember that there are also just as many that are stories of love and friendship that were wonderful examples of how all humans should treat one another.
What would they have learned in jail? This was appalling. The motive was admirable, but to risk sacrificing children is despicable.
Thank you Georgie.
moving, thought inducing and wonderful
thanks for sharing