#Thread:

We rarely discuss The Children's March that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. organized. King had trouble rallying protesters in Birmingham, AL in 1963. He held a meeting and called residents to action and not many stood and volunteered. Folx were afraid of losing their jobs.
And then to everyone's surprise the children stood up.
This caught the attention of certain civil rights leaders. It could work. They argued: Younger folx would have less to lose, right? Initially the plan was to pull college youth...

But that didn't quite work out..
DJs announced that D-Day was coming. Demonstration day. The youth was listening. Here's what they didn't expect: ALL OF THE YOUTH WAS LISTENING.

High school. Middle school. Elementary. Kids as young as six. Word got out and parents warned their children to stay in school...
But these children had just witnessed the bombing of a church that took 4 girls that looked just like them, that past April. They were in. No one was going to stop them.
Actually, I’ll let the tell you themselves. There’s an amazing documentary about this by @Tolerance_org. #mightytimes
Students walked out of classes, jumped out of school windows, and some educators even turned a blind eye. It was clear that it WAS going to happen.

Thousands of children, in groups of 50, singing songs on the way to 16th Baptist Church.
The primary coordinator was James Bevel, a Southern Christian Leadership Conference leader and minister. He and other leaders had trained students in tactics of nonviolence, beforehand. They also made them keep it under wraps. Children. Keeping a secret. For weeks.

I'm in awe.
The goal was to gather and talk to the mayor about the segregation in the city, but the students were met by police instead. They were there to arrest the children for "marching without a permit."
On the first day, hundreds of children were arrested and placed in detention centers.
Day Two: The Commissioner of Public Safety, Bull Connor, ordered police to spray kids with water hoses, hit them with batons, & scare them w/ police dogs.
Despite all of this, the protest continued. Children were released from detention centers and they would rejoin the protest! Images and video footage, like the one in the last tweet, made their way around the world. John F. Kennedy was embarrassed and horrified.
This event is the reason JFK began to PUBLICLY support The Civil Rights Movement & the march was a major milestone that led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

Once he called Alabama, the children were released and the city agreed to desegregate businesses.
The video of this little girl at a protest went viral last summer. It broke my heart. Children should just get to be children.

Her fist and chant made me think of the Children's March. While I am amazed at their feat...I'm also frustrated that this is still happening.
The image of the little girl is from a march on Long Island, NY. That's where I grew up. Long Island is STILL one of the most segregated places in the world. It's also home to the nation's first sundown town suburb. There are still places I wouldn't be caught in, here.
And so...I understand that part of it too.
This is already her fight.
It hurts to say that.

Look back through the images/video in this thread. We are still detaining children. We are still harming them.

Children are still witnessing it all.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
I have nothing profound to end this with, cuz we still dreaming King.

We're still dreaming.
Here's the documentary:
👇🏾 https://twitter.com/themoderate8/status/1351364880931106816
You can follow @ericabuddington.
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