february-tw-2016

BLACK HISTORY
Each February, we learn about the countless contributions of black men and women in America. We've
learned about Martin Luther King Jr. and his Civil Rights efforts. This month I want to concentrate on
the contributions of children that brought about the changes our children currently take for granted.
-v.turner
Nearly 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in Southern states
lived in a starkly unequal world of disenfranchisement, segregation, and various forms of
oppression, including race-inspired violence. ?Jim Crow? laws at the local and state levels
barred them from classrooms and bathrooms, from theaters and train cars, from juries and
legislatures.
T he conditions of segregation thrived even though the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the
?separate but equal? doctrine in 1954. For about 15 years civil rights activists used nonviolent
protest and civil disobedience to bring about change.
In 1963 more than 1,000 children in Birmingham, Alabama joined the civil rights crusade to
protest the treatment of blacks in their city. T hese children joined the ranks of prominent
Black community leaders who risked? and sometimes lost? their lives in the name of freedom
and equality.
T hese demonstrators were met with violent attacks using high-pressure fire hoses and police
dogs -- producing some of the most iconic and troubling images of the Civil Rights Movement.
President John F. Kennedy would later say, "T he events in Birmingham... have so increased the
cries for equality that no city or state or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them."
T he Children's Crusade or March of 1963 is considered one of the major turning points in the
Civil Rights Movement and the "beginning of the end" of a centuries-long struggle for
freedom.
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