Richardson, DaJanae

Ms. Brakebill
AP US Government
9 December 2016

National History Day: Taking a Stand against Discrimination

1963 Childrens March
1963 was a heartbreaking year but was also the most effective year in the civil rights
movement. After 4 little girls were killed at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Martin Luther King
was arrested and put in jail and Medgar Evers was assassinated, there was a since of fear going
through the minds of all the adults. Adults knew that they werent going to be able to march
because they would lose their jobs. The children then realized that they would have to take a
stand and came up with a plan to fill up all the jails. On May 2, children from all over
Birmingham gathered at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church to get ready to get arrested. Thousands
of children poured into the church to take a stand for change, equality and discrimination. They
were released from the church in groups of 50 to be put in buses and taken down to the local
jails.
I decided to take interest in this topic because most times people never know the start
behind something or the hard work and dedication that brought us here. African Americans have
come a long way as far as being equal and being treated like everyone else. We were once slaves
and werent able to even live in a house. Then we couldnt even sit in the same restaurant as
whites and couldnt shop at the same store as whites. But now we have the freedom to do
whatever we would like to an extent. We still have discrimination and violence but its not as bad
as it was in was in the 1900s.

The topic for National History Day is taking a stand in history. The thousands of children
in the Birmingham Childrens Crusade took a stand in against discrimination and the adversity
that they were facing during that time. The second day, the police came prepared for the march.
They brought hoses and dogs and much more buses and police trucks. They sprayed those
children with water pressured hose and commanded the dogs to attack them. This shows us that
white continued to see nothing wrong with the way they were handling African Americans. Even
after that day, some children continued to come back to be arrested and some were prepared for
the hose by wearing a bathing suit and some even came back from recently being I jail and were
willing to go back. President John F. Kennedy finally ended all discrimination in the United
States and he proposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination of any kind
whether for race, religion, ethnicity, gender, color or national origin.

Work Cited
Primary Source
1.

I used this picture for information. It helped me create my picture in my head about
what the march looked like.

2.

I used

this picture for

information. It helped me understand how the police did not want them protesting.
3.

I used this picture for information. It helped me understand

how the police hosed them down and were attacking them
for protesting.

Secondary Primary
1. Gilmore, Kim. "The Birmingham Children's Crusade of 1963." Biography.com. A&E
Networks Television, 19 Jan. 2015. Web. 09 Dec. 2016.\
- I used it for information. The source helped me to figure out who was in charge of
the march and where they met up before the children was arrested.

2. "Childrens Crusade." Childrens Crusade. N.P., n.d. Web. 09 Dec. 2016.

- I used this source for information. I used this site to see how many kids were
arrested and what all the brutal discrimination that happen.

3. Staff/, Http://www.theroot.com/articles/author/TheRoot. "Childrens March

1963: A Defiant Moment." The Root. N.p., 24 June 2016. Web. 09 Dec. 2016.
- I used this site as information. I used this site to help me understand what role
John F. Kennedy had in the Civil Rights Act of 1963.