1963
THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. traveled to Birmingham in the spring of 1963, along with Southern Christian Leadership Conference co-founder Rev. Ralph Abernathy, hoping to shore up resistance against segregation in the state. The pair partnered with the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, a local civil rights organization led by Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a prominent minister and activist in Birmingham.
But the Alabama movement was fresh off a failed attempt to end segregation in Albany, Georgia. Overall, fewer people were attending meetings, sit-ins, and marches. After King was arrested and confined to a jail cell, where he wrote his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” he knew, along with other activists, that a new strategy was essential if they wanted the campaign to succeed.
James Bevel, a member of the SCLC, came up with an idea to include school-age children in protests to help desegregate Birmingham. The strategy involved recruiting popular teenagers from Black high schools, such as the quarterbacks and cheerleaders, who could influence their classmates to attend meetings with them at Black churches in Birmingham to learn about the non-violent movement. There was also an economic reason to have children participate, since adults risked being fired from their jobs for missing work and protesting.
Janice Kelsey, who was one of the students recruited by Bevel, remembers that he asked the students questions designed to make them aware of the differences in white and Black schools—that hand-me-down books and football helmets were not what white students used; nor was there just one typewriter in white schools, but rooms full of typewriters. “Things like that became personal to me, and I decided I wanted to do something about it,” Kelsey says.
King and other activists and members of the Black community were adamantly opposed to involving children in marches because of the threats of violence from white mobs, as well as from policemen led by Birmingham’s public safety commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor, notorious for his racist policies. Bevel, undeterred, told the children to gather at 16th Street Baptist Church on May 2, 1963. More than 1,000 students skipped school to participate in the protest. The youth, ranging from ages 7-18, held picket signs and marched in groups of 10 to 50, singing freedom songs.
The demonstrators had several destinations: Some went to City Hall, and others went to lunch counters or the downtown shopping district. They marched daily for almost a week.
As the children bravely took to the streets, the Birmingham police were waiting to arrest them, putting them in paddy wagons and school buses. Kelsey says she was arrested on her first day of marching and remained in jail for four days.
The sight of young people peacefully protesting reinvigorated the Birmingham movement, and throngs of people started attending meetings again and joining the demonstrations. King changed his mind about the effectiveness of the Children’s Crusade.
Although the police were mostly restrained on the first day, that restraint was short lived. In the following days, law enforcement brought out water hoses and police dogs.
Television crews and newspapers filmed the young demonstrators getting arrested, attacked by the dogs, and hosed down by the police, causing national outrage. More than 2,000 children were reportedly arrested during the days-long protest.
President John F. Kennedy demanded a resolution and sent Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall to Birmingham to facilitate negotiations. Influential white businessmen and city officials, already unsettled because of seeing the business district swarming with demonstrators, responded to President Kennedy’s demand by calling a meeting with King. An agreement was made to desegregate lunch counters, businesses, and restrooms and to improve hiring opportunities for Black people in Birmingham.
Sources
History.com – Children’s Crusade Birmingham Civil Rights
Janice Kelsey, I Woke Up With My Mind On Freedom. (Pittsburgh, PA: Urban Press, 2017).