The Tale of the Badass Kids from Birmingham Who Marched the Civil Rights Act Right Up to the Finish Line

The Children's Crusade of Birmingham (May 2-10, 1963)

Once upon a time, in late April 1963, three American civil rights leaders, newly released from jail after being arrested for leading a demonstration in Birmingham, huddled together and realized they desperately needed to hatch and build a new plan.

Two of these leaders, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, had arrived in Birmingham with high hopes at the invitation of the Reverend Frederick (“Freddie”) Lee Shuttlesworth, who had, for eight years, served as pastor of Birmingham’s Bethel Baptist Church and, in that time, survived multiple beatings, bombings, and attempts on his life. Dr. King considered him “the most courageous fighter in the South.”

Prior to Dr. King’s and Reverend Abernathy’s arrival in Birmingham, the U.S. civil rights movement’s momentum had started to flag. Also, while President John F. Kennedy expressed support for civil rights, he had held back from introducing the landmark civil rights legislation that leaders wanted him to advance. Here, in this heavily segregated city of Birmingham, the new arrivals hoped to reinvigorate the campaign with new, bold displays of nonviolent resistance, to capture the attention of the press and the public, and push President Kennedy to take this decisive and critical step.

Birmingham’s Black residents, having suffered from extreme racial segregation and officially sanctioned violence, seemed ripe to resist. Between 1945 and 1962, fifty unsolved, racially motivated bombings inspired the city’s terrible nickname, “Bombingham.” A Birmingham neighborhood inhabited by both Black and white families experienced so many attacks, it was called “Dynamite Hill.” Black churches engaged in the civil rights movement were also targeted, and attacked.

The first phase of the Birmingham civil rights campaign of organized sit-ins, kneel-ins, marches and other forms of protest were supported by many Birmingham residents and showed early promise. However, as time wore on, the leaders’ hopes started to fade. Hundreds of residents were arrested, and with these arrests, Birmingham residents started to succumb to disillusionment, burn-out, and fear. Increasingly, African American residents expressed they did not dare to continue to publicly resist as they feared losing jobs and homes if they did.

On April 10, 1963, an injunction barring protests and a prohibitively high increase in the bail bond set for those arrested (from $200 to $1,500, equal to an increase from $2,000 to $15,000 in 2024) by the city’s Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor, decreased the public’s willingness to participate even more. In the April 12, 1963 march led by Dr. King, Reverend Abernathy, and Reverend Shuttlesworth, only fifty Birmingham residents followed. For their participation, all were arrested and jailed.

On April 19, 1963, TIME magazine ran an article with the title “The South: Poorly Timed Protest,” claiming, “[t]o many Birmingham Negroes, King’s drive inflamed tensions at a time when the city seemed to be making some progress, however small, in race relations.” The magazine carried the quote of the Rev. Albert S. Foley, chairman of Alabama’s Advisory Committee of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, characterizing Dr. King’s and his co-leaders’ campaign as “poorly timed and misdirected.”

From his jail cell, Dr. King penned his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail in reaction to a statement from eight Birmingham clergymen carried in the Birmingham News which condemned the protests, and explaining to the world his reasons for taking a stand in Birmingham and the purpose of his civil rights campaign. After he and the others were released, the three leaders conferred. They realized they had few options; fewer ideas; and diminishing hope. Until a fourth leader, the Reverend James Bevel, a veteran of the Nashville Student movement described by a fellow activist as “crazy and brilliant, all the same time,” stepped up, and shared his “crazy” and “brilliant” idea.

Reverend Bevel urged Dr. King and the other leaders to light the flames of resistance with the bravery and resilience of Birmingham’s children, instead. Bevel proposed fueling the movement through the energy of children he and his wife had steadily recruited and cultivated at youth meetings every day after school at Birmingham’s St. James Baptist Church. Some of these children had attended the meetings held for adults there, too, stood up, and volunteered to go to jail.

Dr. King hated the idea. He did not want to put children in danger. However, he could not see another way. After much doubt, hesitation, and misgiving, James Bevel’s argument prevailed.

The children were taught techniques of non-violent resistance. They were eager to participate, and many did so without their parents’ permission or even knowledge. The civil rights leaders sent the pre-arranged signal, using a pre-arranged song (Big Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll!”), and message, communicated by on air by local DJs, including one known as “Shelley, the Playboy”: “Kids, there’s gonna be a party at the park!…We gonna jump and shout, we gonna turn it out!”

And with that, the children knew it was time to begin their crusade.

So, on May 2, 1963: the children deployed, and marched! Hundreds left school, climbing out of windows and doors to join the demonstration at the 16th Street Baptist Church starting-point.

The children marched. They filed out of the 16th Street Baptist Church, two by two, fifty at a time, towards city hall and the downtown business district, according to plan. They were mostly teenagers, but some as young as six.

The children marched, singing as they went. As they marched, police approached, came and arrested them; loaded them into police cars and wagons; and took them to jail.

Another fifty children followed, also singing. They, too, were arrested, and another line followed; then another, after that. The children marched in different directions, and police pursued. When caught, children were loaded into school buses, and transported to Birmingham’s jails, juvenile detention facilities, and a local fairgrounds.

More than 1,000 children, all told, marched on May 2, 1963; at least six hundred were caught, and jailed.

The next day, May 3, 1963, hundreds more children came out, and marched. By now, the city’s jails were filled. Some children were released from jail; and when they were, many returned to march again.

The city’s public safety commissioner had the fire department set up water cannons, to places where children were expected to march, and ordered police to attack the children and bystanders with batons, clubs, dogs, and high-pressure fire hoses, and to arrest more children, as needed; and they did.

Under heavy spray from the fire hoses, many children were forced to the ground; others scattered, hid behind trees, and ran. The force of the water was very powerful, and very cold; it tore tree bark, clothing, skin and hair, and it stung.

But one small group of children locked arms and continued to march, to the best of their ability, just as they had been taught. The children pushed past the force of the water, singing, “Freedom, freedom, freedom!” And as they did, other children were inspired to continue marching, and found themselves able to push past, just as the earlier ones had.

On the second day, approximately 1,922 children were arrested. The city and county jails were full, with more than 300 children crammed into holding cells meant for fifty people. And still, the days passed; and still, the children continued to protest, and march. They were joined by others, including adults, who, inspired by the children’s courage, and also joined the demonstration.

The brutality of the police’s attacks was filmed and photographed and, when circulated by the media, horrified the nation and drew the world’s attention to the children’s plight; to racial segregation; and to the brutality of officially sanctioned violence in the American South.

The attacks and the Children’s Crusade caught the U.S. President’s attention, as well. On May 4, 1963, President Kennedy sent his assistant attorney general to Birmingham to urge the city’s white leaders to negotiate with the demonstrators. By May 6, 2,500 protestors of all ages populated the city’s jails; each day, the number of protesters continued to grow.

On May 10, 1963, Birmingham’s white city officials capitulated and agreed to a tentative deal that included the desegregation of lunch counters, fitting rooms, restrooms, and drinking fountains. The children were released from jail. However, proponents of segregation and hate violently expressed their objections in a bombing campaign that began the evening of May 11, 1963. That night, a bomb exploded and damaged the A.G. Gaston Motel, where Dr. King had been lodging; another was set, and damaged the home of his brother, the Reverend Alfred Daniel King.

On May 20, 1963, the Birmingham Board of Education announced that all 1,081 high school students who had taken part in the demonstrations would be expelled from school; and that many middle school and even elementary school children would be suspended, as well. A federal district court upheld the ruling. However, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision, and ordered the students readmitted to school.

On June 11, 1963, President Kennedy, bolstered by the courage shown by the children in their crusade, made a televised address in which he announced his support for landmark federal civil rights legislation to ban racial discrimination in many areas of American life. He called on Congress to enact this legislation. After the Children’s Crusade, the American civil rights movement regained momentum. On July 12, 1963, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered all Birmingham schools to begin integrating, the result of a lawsuit filed six years earlier by Birmingham barber James Armstrong Sr., whose children had been denied admittance to the then all-white Graymont Elementary School.

On August 28, 1963, Dr. King led the historic March on Washington in which he delivered his legendary “I Have a Dream” speech.

However, violence, terror, and tragedy still continued to chase the heels of the crusade.

On September 15, 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan, resulting in the tragic deaths of four African American girls, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, and Carole Robertson, all aged 14, and Denise McNair, 11. Also killed that day were two African American teenage boys, Virgil Ware,13; killed by a white teenager; and Johnny Robinson, 16, shot in the back by a white police officer.

On November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated.

In testament to the bravery of the many African American children who participated in the Children’s Crusade of 1963, as well as these young martyrs, the landmark Civil Rights Act was passed and signed into law by President Kennedy’s successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, on July 2, 1964. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned racial discrimination in housing, education, employment, and public accommodations, and stands as an important bulwark against such discrimination in these areas, today.

The Children’s Crusade of 1963 has since been recognized as one of the most powerful and effective protests in American history, and a watershed in the U.S. civil rights movement. In 2017, Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument was established to preserve and commemorate the Children's Crusade and other civil rights movement events. It includes Kelly Ingram Park, with life-sized statues, interpretive signs, and a free cell phone tour that commemorate the Children's Crusade.

Last year marked the 60th anniversary of this historic crusade, which did so much to protect people of all races against discrimination in so many critical areas of life, and to further the American dream of equal opportunity and justice.

For the seventh year this May, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI) organized a reenactment of the Children’s Crusade with students, educators, high school poets, city leaders, a representative of the U.S. Department of Justice, and members of the Foot Soldiers, a group of those who participated in the historic protests sixty-one years ago.

Over seven hundred students from across Birmingham participated, along with others who came from other parts of the country, including Washington, DC and Berkeley, CA. The event was kicked off with an empowerment ceremony. BCRI staff wanted to ensure that the next generation is ready to fight for change.