Desegregating West End School

Desegregating West End School. March Route for Education. , Community civil rights leaders who helped organize the Movement and embraced the philosophy of nonviolence looked for well-disciplined children with good moral character who would at retaliate if they encountered bullying or violence by White classmates. These leaders sought out brave parents and children who were willing to integrate Birmingham city schools in 1963. They found only a few. Black students who went to all-White schools faced isolation and bullying. Their parents faced the economic threats of losing their jobs or their credit. All of them feared the Ku Klux Klan and violent retaliation. But the few families who dared cross the color line in 1963 were willing to face the dangers to enroll their children into better-equipped White schools., September 11,1963 , Reporters surround teenager Patricia Marcus as she gets into a car after her first day at West End High School in Birmingham. She and Josephine Powell are the first Black students to attend this all-White school. During the day, a photographer's picture shows Miss Marcus sitting alone in her new classroom; the White students had left in protest against her coming to their school. Marcus, Powell and the three other students who integrated former all-White schools in Birmingham in September 1963 faced extreme isolation, name-calling, threats and other bullying behaviors from many White classmates who did not accept them.,

"Intelligence plus character , that is the goal of true education." , Martin Luther King Jr.

, Lesson D12: Describe how you might feel or what you might do if you were one of the first students to attend a racially segregated school.