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Gandhi A March to the Sea Teaching Guide

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Gandhi A March to the Sea Teaching Guide

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Carter Woodson the FATHER of Black History

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Carter Reads the Newspaper (Literally Cultured Read Aloud)

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Sit In: How Four Friends Stood Up By Sitting Down

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Watch Brian and Andrea Pinkney introduce their new picture book

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Diane Nash and the Sit-Ins | PBS LearningMedia

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In this interview, civil-rights leader Diane Nash recalls her role in the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, the 1961 Freedom Rides, and the 1965 voting rights campaign in Selma, Alabama. As one of the founders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Nash mobilized her fellow college students to confront segregation and discrimination with nonviolent direct action.

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Diane Nash, Founding Member of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee April 1960

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Diane Nash, Founding Member of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee April 1960

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Diane Nash emerged from the sit-in movement in Nashville, Tennessee and became one of the most esteemed student leaders and organizers of the time.

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Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down, read by Ryan Harris for TTLM “Read Aloud”

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Toward the end of April 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and fellow leaders in the civil rights movement faced a grim reality in Birmingham, Alabama. With diminished support and fewer volunteers, their campaign to end segregationist policies was teetering on failure. But when an unorthodox plan to recruit Black children to march was implemented, the movement reversed itself, reinvigorating the fight for racial equality, in what became known as the Children's Crusade.

King had traveled to Birmingham in the spring of 1963, along with Southern Christian Leadership Conference co-founder Rev. Ralph Abernathy, hoping to shore up resistance against segregation in the state. The pair partnered with the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, a local civil rights organization led by Fred Shuttlesworth, a prominent minister and activist.

But the Alabama movement was fresh off a failed attempt to end segregation in Albany, Georgia. Overall, fewer people were attending meetings, sit-ins and marches. After King was arrested and confined to a jail cell, where he wrote his famous work, Letter from a Birmingham Jail, he knew, along with other activists, that a new strategy was essential if the campaign were to succeed.

"The number of adults who were willing to volunteer, to get arrested, had steadily dwindled those last two weeks of April and it looked like the movement was about to fall apart," says Glenn Eskew, a history professor at Georgia State University and author of the 1997 book, But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle.

Recruiting Children to the Cause

James Bevel, a member of SCLC, came up with an idea to include school-age children in protests to help desegregate Birmingham. The strategy involved recruiting popular teenagers from Black high schools, such as the quarterbacks and cheerleaders, who could influence their classmates to attend meetings with them at Black churches in Birmingham to learn about the non-violent movement. There was also an economic reason to have children participate since adults risked being fired from their jobs for missing work and protesting.

Janice Kelsey was 15 when she attended her first meeting for the Children's Crusade. "I knew what segregation was and separation, but I didn't understand the extent or the level of the inequities in that separation," recalls Kelsey, a Birmingham native who wrote about her experience in the movement in her 2017 memoir, I Woke Up with my Mind on Freedom.

Bevel posed questions to the students who discovered that hand-me-down books and football helmets were not what white students used. Nor was there just one typewriter in the entire school, like Black students had, but rooms with typewriters at the white schools, says Kelsey. "Things like that became personal to me and I decided I wanted to do something about it," she says.

King, along with other activists and members in the Black community were adamantly opposed to involving children in marches because of the threats to violence from white mobs, as well as from policemen led by Eugene "Bull" Connor, the Commissioner of Public Safety in Birmingham notorious for his racist policies.

Bevel, undeterred, told the children to gather at 16th Street Baptist Church on May 2, 1963. More than 1,000 students skipped school to participate in the protest. The youth, ranging from ages 7-18, held picket signs and marched in groups of 10 to 50, singing freedom songs.

"We were told what to expect," says Kelsey. "We even saw some film strips of people who had sat at lunch counters and were spit on and pushed and all that. We were told that if you decide to participate that this is a nonviolent movement, so you can't fight back."

Nonviolent Student Demonstrators Faced Hosing, Arrests

The demonstrators had several destinations: some went to City Hall, others went to lunch counters or the downtown shopping district. They marched daily for almost a week.

"It was well thought out," says Vicki Crawford, director of the Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection. "It was not just a bunch of people calling up to meet downtown. There was mobilization and organization, following King's Six Steps of Non-Violence to bring about social change."

As the children bravely took to the streets, the Birmingham police were waiting to arrest them, putting them in paddy wagons and school buses. Kelsey says she was arrested on her first day marching and remained in jail for four days.

The sight of young people peacefully protesting reinvigorated the Birmingham movement and throngs of people started attending meetings again and joining the demonstration. King changed his mind as well about the effectiveness of the Children's Crusade. Although the police were mostly restrained the first day, that did not continue. Law enforcement brought out water hoses and police dogs.

Television crews and newspapers filmed the young demonstrators getting arrested and hosed down by the Birmingham police, causing national outrage. More than 2,000 children were reportedly arrested during the days-long protest.

"They had locked up as many people as they could possibly lock up, and they couldn't control it anymore. And that's what broke the back of segregation," says Eskew. "A civil order collapsed because there weren't enough police. "

Children Became 'Catalyst for Change'

When influential white businessmen and city officials saw the business district swarming with demonstrators, in addition to President John F. Kennedy demanding a resolution and sending assistant attorney general Burke Marshall to Birmingham to facilitate negotiations, white city leaders called a meeting with King. An agreement was made to desegregate lunch counters, businesses and restrooms and improve hiring opportunities for Black people in Birmingham.

"I think we served as a catalyst for change," says Kelsey.

Improvements hardly happened overnight in Birmingham. In September 1963, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four Black girls. Yet, the civil rights movement kept up the momentum, and the following year, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

HISTORY Vault: Black History

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The Children's Crusade: When the Youth of Birmingham Marched for Justice | HISTORY

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Facing a dwindling movement in Alabama, civil rights leaders recruited Black students to revive the march to end segregation.

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The Youngest Marcher: The Story of AudTrey Faye Hendricks a Young Civil Rights Activist

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The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks a Young Civil Rights Activist

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In 1963, at the age of nine, Audrey Hendricks left school and joined more than 2,000 students in a Birmingham demonstration that came to beknown as the Children's Crusade. In this interview, Hendricks recalls her participation and arrest.

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Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop, 1968

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Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop, 1968

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Courtney Shaw Reads “Memphis, Martin And The Mountaintop” by Alice Faye Duncan | Gotham Reads

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Surviving Memphis Sanitation Workers Awarded $70K Grants

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Surviving Memphis Sanitation Workers Awarded $70K Grants

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Surviving Memphis Sanitation Workers From 1968 Strike Awarded $70k Grants | Sunday TODAY

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Hands Around the Library  January 25, 2011

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Hands Around the Library  January 25, 2011

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Read aloud with Karen Leggett Abouraya & Ismail Serageldin: HANDS AROUND THE LIBRARY!

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The first people to live on the banks of the Nile were hunters and fishermen, who settled there over 8,000 years ago. They learned to grow crops and raise animals, and they began to build villages and towns. They traded with their neighbors and learned to sail boats. By 3000 B.C., a civilization was established.

Around 3100 B.C., the kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt were unified under a powerful king, later called a pharaoh. These kings built huge pyramids, temples, and other monuments. They also conquered other lands.

By 1000 B.C., Egypt had split into smaller parts and the kingdom was in decline. Strong neighbors attacked and took over Egyptian territory. In 31 B.C., Egypt fell under Roman control. In A.D. 640, Muslim warriors took over Egypt and founded the modern capital, Cairo. They ruled for several centuries. In the 16th century, Egypt became part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire.

European powers played an increasing role in Egypt starting in the late 18th century. In 1882, the British invaded and occupied Egypt. The British wanted control of the Suez Canal, which linked the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea and greatly shortened the sailing trip from Asia to Europe. Egypt gained full independence from Great Britain in 1952 and took control of the Suez Canal in 1956.

Egypt and other neighboring Arab countries fought a series of wars with the Jewish state of Israel into the 1970s. In 1979 Egypt and Israel signed a peace agreement.

In 2011, a popular uprising toppled Egypt's long-time president, Hosni Mubarek. The country has held several democratic elections since 2011, but the role of the military in government remains strong.

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Egypt Country Profile - National Geographic Kids

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The first people to live on the banks of the Nile were hunters and fishermen, who settled there over 8,000 years ago. They learned to grow crops and raise animals, and they began to build villages and towns. They traded with their neighbors and learned to sail boats.

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Project I Am, a 501c3 organization that was created by Jahkil Naeem Jackson when he was 8 years old. Jahkil, now 15, has a heartfelt desire to help those in need. After helping his aunt distribute food to the unhoused in Chicago, he knew that he wanted to do more to make a difference.

It quickly became Jahkil's mission to build awareness of people impacted by homelessness and to help the unhoused population by offering them what he calls "Blessing Bags," a giveaway filled with wipes, socks, deodorant, hand sanitizer, granola bars, toothbrushes, toothpaste, bottled water, and more.

Jahkil has set and surpassed many goals in his young life. Distributing his Blessing Bags to the unhoused has been one of his biggest achievements thus far. In just a few years, Jahkil has led Project I Am's efforts in raising over $400,000 for those in need. Jahkil's efforts have touched 100,000 men, women and children across the world. Along with the help of friends and family, Jahkil has organized distribution to those in need in Chicago, Los Angeles, Oklahoma, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Virginia, Idaho and more. He has also provided items of support to orphans in Mbabane, Swaziland and Ghana as well as volcano victims in Guatemala, and hurricane survivors in the Bahamas, Florida, Houston and Puerto Rico.

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Project I Am, a 501c3 organization that was created by Jahkil Naeem Jackson when he was 8 years old. Jahkil, now 15, has a heartfelt desire to help those in need. After helping his aunt distribute food to the unhoused in Chicago, he knew that he wanted to do more to make a difference.