Children's Crusade for Education

Children's Crusade for Education. March Route for Education. Birmingham's Black schoolchildren played an important role in moving the city toward ending legal segregation. Under the leadership of SCLC field coordinators, thousands of children left their segregated schools to join the marches in the downtown district. “The Children's Crusade" captured world-wide attention. The images of brave children under attack by police dogs and fire hoses and gazing from jail cells during the 1963 demonstrations shocked and angered the world. The moral outrage pressured federal officials to intervene to end the crisis and forced President John F. Kennedy to call for stronger laws to protect the civil rights of African American citizens. Thus, these schoolchildren helped free themselves and the entire Black community from Birmingham's many unequal and unfair segregation laws., Paired marker , May 1963 , These schoolchildren head for a bus that will take them to jail for taking part in the mass demonstrations against segregation. Their role in the Birmingham Movement in the spring of 1963 advanced the civil rights cause later that year. In July, a federal appeals court ordered Birmingham's school board to end its separate system for each race, beginning in September 1963. It was a major victory for Birmingham civil rights leaders, who had tried to integrate the city's public schools for years since the Brown v. Bd. f Education ruling. Blacks in Birmingham began to enroll their children at all-White schools, in the fall of 1963. Gov. George Wallace responded by sending Alabama State Troopers to block integration at the public schools where Black parents had enrolled their children. , Carolyn McKinstry , Veteran of the Birmingham Movement, Lesson D9: Discuss the nonviolent ways that Birmingham children used to push for equal education.