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Remembering the 1963 Children’s March
Video from Omar García Pérez Youtube Channel
Check out this powerful video that chronicles the historic Birmingham Children’s March/Crusade of 1963. These children risked their own personal safety to protest injustice. It is ironic that the children were called into service because possibly adult were not willing to take the risk. Continue reading “Remembering The Children’s Crusade of 1963”
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Left to right: Walter Reuther, Benjamin McFall, James Del Rio, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rev. C.L. Franklin. Behind Franklin is Detroit Mayor Jerome Cavanagh.
Two months before the “March On Washington” was held, there was The “Walk To Freedom” on June 23, 1963. Held in Detroit, it was the largest ever civil rights demonstration in the country at the time. It was estimated that approximately 125,000 people marched down Woodward Avenue in Detroit.
It was also the first time that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous, “I Have A Dream Speech”. National and state leaders who marched along with Reverend King included United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther, former Michigan governor John B. Swainson, and Detroit mayor Jerome Cavanagh.
The march ended at Cobo Hall where Dr. King was cheered by thousands of supporters when he stated that segregation needed to end. Dr. King believed that it was the responsibility of African Americans to take part in peaceful demonstrations like the Walk to Freedom, which he called, “one of the most wonderful things that has happened in America.”
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On May 2, 1963 nearly a thousand elementary, middle and high school and college students in Birmingham, Alabama participated in The Children’s Crusade. SCLC staff member James Bevel proposed recruiting local students, arguing that while many adults may be reluctant to participate in demonstrations, for fear of losing their jobs, their children had less to lose. King initially had reservations, but after deliberation he agreed, On May 2, more than a thousand black students skipped their classes and gathered at Sixth Street Baptist Church. As they approached police lines, hundreds were arrested and carried off to jail.
When hundreds more youth gathered the next day, commissioner Bull Connor directed the police and fire departments to use force to halt the demonstration. Images of children being blasted by high-pressure fire hoses, clubbed by police officers, and attacked by police dogs appeared on television and in newspapers and triggered outrage throughout the world. The Birmingham campaign ended on May 10 when the SCLC and local officials reached an agreement in which the city promised to desegregate downtown stores and release all protestors from jail if the SCLC would end the boycotts and demonstrations. While he faced criticism for exposing children to violence—most notably from Malcolm X, who said that “real men don’t put their children on the firing line”— King maintained that the demonstrations allowed children to develop “a sense of their own stake in freedom”
Black Mail Readers: Would you have allowed your children to participate in march? Why or Why Not?
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