Segregation: Remembering The Children’s Crusade

One hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation was written, African Americans were still fighting for equal rights in every day life. The first real success of this movement did not come until the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954 which was followed by many boycotts and protests. The largest of these protests, the March on Washington, was held on August 28, 1963 “for jobs and freedom” (March on Washington 11). An incredible amount of preparation went into the event to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of people attending from around the nation and to deal with any potential incidents.

In addition, according to “Freedom’s Children”, people experience struggles during the Civil Rights Movement. For example, Joseph Lacey, one of the African American witnessed the attack people on the Freedom Riders in Montgomery. Freedom Riders were among the most famous of the Civil Right. It is a protest toward the segregated waiting rooms, restaurant, and buses. Joseph Lacey state in the book that he saw the Freedom Riders beaten. He cried and couldn't believe that human being beat up other human beings like crazy (Text 1: Freedom’s Children, page 73). Joseph Lacey’s description in the book shows one of the struggles that people face during the Civil Rights Movement, violent. And most of the violence happens between different race, even though they are all human being. This is what also makes Civil Rights Movement such an inhumanity movement in America history. The other struggle that people face during the Civil Rights Movement is people get attack by the America police. For example, Children’s Crusade in Birmingham, Alabama, people who attend the march no matter what age may get attack by police or the police dog. Children’s Crusade is a march with more than one thousand student skipping classes and gather at Sixth Street Baptist Church in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. According to “ Freedom’s Children”, Audrey Faye Hendricks mention that when he watched the first demonstrator, the saw a police dog attack an elderly black man watching. He couldn’t believe that the police did not take care of the dog and let it attack an elder man (Text 1: Freedom’s Children, page 78). This description shows one of the struggles that African American who’s in different age face during the march during the Civil Rights Movement, attack by police and the police

Alabama was often the epicenter of civil rights activism and steadfast perseverance for African Americans during the 1960s. It is where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led his congregation and where four little girls were murdered and 22 citizens were injured when the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed. It is also where Dr. King and other activists planned the march on Washington, where he and others leaders like John Lewis were met with violence but ultimately claimed victory in the Selma to Montgomery March of 1965. And who could forget the powerful images of the Birmingham Children’s Crusade of 1963, where young, non-violent protesters were met with high-power water hoses, beaten with batons and threatened by police

Theres is no secret that the blatant civil rights violations imposed on blacks in America through racial segregation laws served as an injustice to all American citizens in the mid-1900s. At the heart of the segregation battle was the obvious mistreatment, both physical and emotional, bestowed onto African Americans by their white counterparts, especially in the South. After decades of harsh mistreatment, African American leaders sought out to challenge, and ultimately change, the laws and legislation drafted by their government centuries before those men and women existed. Though peaceful protests were a common method of action blacks chose to partake in, many of these individuals were met commonly with acts of violence from angry southerners

Being an African-American in the United States of America in the 1950’s and 1960’s, was comparable with being of the Jewish faith in Germany during the 1930’s and 1940’s: it was discriminatory. America may have been the ‘land of the free’ and slavery had been abolished – but what did this mean, when persecution and racism were prevalent and commonplace in society? African-Americans were discriminated against, segregated, beaten and murdered, whilst the government, especially state governments, ignored this and complacency grew prevalent. By the middle of the twentieth century, African-American’s had begun to assert themselves, and in the period 1955 – 1968,a new form of protesting emerged which generated new achievements. This method was a

Segregation is the act of discriminating against others because of their race. The act of Segregating is morally wrong. Racism executes appalling feats. This is because it slows down the development of countries, and brings out the worst in people.

Many African Americans would have separate schools, bus seats, and even fountain drinks for the “colored”. If an African American would ever break these “laws”, they were either jailed, beaten, or killed for it. In response, many Africans saw the negative effects of violence and instead of choosing to fight back violently, they chose to protest through “nonviolence [,] as it grows from Judaic-Christian traditions [and] seeks a social order of justice permeated by love” (Doc. A). Many African Americans believed that through nonviolence it would help benefit the fight for equality because it would help them gain sympathy and support from the people through the sight violence being used on peaceful people. However, many African American’s were getting frustrated at how long it was taking to gain equality, protection of civil rights, and justice in courts so many thought that the time had “come for black people to arm themselves against [violence] before it [was] too late” (Doc. F) Many African Americans then started to turn to violence to try to push the fight for equality, but this was ultimately a disastrous decision because this caused the Civil Rights Movement to lose a lot of support they had from the

Imagine being an African American person living in a world of segregation but he still has a dream, a dream to become a boxer in a league predominantly white and being looked down on because of his skin color. Segregation in the 1900’s was cruel and divided because “After the Civil War, millions of enslaved African Americans hoped to join the larger society as equal citizens” but unfortunately were not embraced as equals by much of white America (History Staff). Nearly 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in southern states still lived in an unequal world of segregation.

The more people that police arrested, the more there were that protested. In the eyes of the southern whites, having African Americans sit in at white lunch counters was against their unwritten law. In reality, it was the whites that throw and beat African Americans that should have went to jail. Newspapers, unknowingly, showed that

In a march against segregation and barriers for African-American voting rights, peaceful marchers were exposed to harsh treatment by the police, 50 being hospitalized by the terrorism inflicted on them (civilrights.org). The targeted protest became infamous in the Civil Rights Movement, marked “Bloody Sunday” and was crucial to gaining favor of the public (civilrights.org). The two causes went hand in hand in this, rocketing in support and becoming the main goal of the country - the end of segregation was the most dire problem that the Civil Rights Movement needed to solve. And with the 24th Amendment, Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Voting Rights Act of 1965 being ratified, the civil rights movement and the fight to end segregation reached its legal goal (infoplease.com). However, the nation’s mentality needed work - though the popularity of Civil Rights was rising, many riots and racial hate crimes continued to occur throughout the country, with many casualties resulting from them (infoplease.com). The ratification of these laws may have made the “separate but equal” rhetoric illegal for the U.S. but the citizens inside it still battled for their beliefs. As segregation and civil rights become national topics, their

“On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, AL and sparked the American Civil Rights Movement of the 20th century”(history.com). As mentioned in the quote, Rosa Parks’s incident on the bus was the start of all this protesting and rallying. Frustrated with the injustice and cruelty, Black leaders and Black communities began the civil rights movement which required nonviolence. “We had to use our mass meetings to explain nonviolence to a community of people who had never heard of the philosophy and in many instances were not sympathetic with it”(Martin Luther King Jr.). Unfortunately, as MLK Jr. stated, many people were not fully in support of the civil rights movement , but leaders still continued to keep pushing and hold “mass meetings” because they wanted equality that bad. Unfortunately, nonviolence did not really seem to put an end to the segregation and discrimination. Whites still continued to treat Blacks unfairly and unjustly. “There had been resistance by African Americans at the peak of segregation, and seemingly non-political actions in the workplace and in public spaces expanded black autonomy in ways that whites simply did not understand”(gilderrehrman.org). Apparently, Whites did not seem to understand the actions made by

On wikipedia it states,”The children's crusade was was a march by hundreds of school students” and it says that the purpose of the march was to have the students and kids to walk down town and talk to the mayor about segregation. Many of the students left their schools that day and got arrested but were later set free that day. There were later arrested the next day. The students did not meet with the mayor that day. Instead they met with the police, whom had fire hoses and K-9 Unit dogs. The police sprayed the children with the hoses and set the dogs after the running children. Some children were as young as seven or eight years old. So in return the president had to react to the incident. He reacted by showing full support for racial equality. This time period is very important to the civil rights movement. Two major accomplishments were made during this time period. They were the laws passed by Congress.

Since the emancipation of slavery, the African Americans had a continuous fight for their complete emancipations and for their civil rights for over one hundred years. The white Americans couldn’t accept and see the African Americans as free human being and equal as them. Their ignorance was making them blind, building in themselves a hate that was unbearable to a human kind to do to the others. That hate overcome any reasonable behave that forced the law to intervene several times for consecutive years.

In 1982, racial segregation in public schools began over the United States Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson’s, “separate but equal” doctrine, that lasted until the early 1950’s. This precedent legally enabled “separate” facilities for black students and white students as long as they were “equal”. During the turn of the 19th century, the term “Jim Crow” was used to refer to African Americans. This term would later be used as the name of the laws that kept African Americans from public functions and places. It would not be until 1954, that the “separate but equal” doctrine would be changed for good.

Blacks have long endured the brutality of criticism because of their skin color. The Freedom Riders took on abuse and a burning bus to test the Court’s ruling, equal transportation for Blacks and Whites. Non-violent sit-ins were another step towards getting Blacks equal rights. Four African American college students walked up to a