Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot by O'Reilly Bill & Dugard Martin

Author:O'Reilly, Bill & Dugard, Martin [O'Reilly, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2012-10-01T16:00:00+00:00

11

MAY 3, 1963

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA

1:00 P.M.

“We’re going to walk, walk, walk. Freedom … Freedom … Freedom,” the protesters chant as they march out through the great oak doors of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. It is a Friday, and these young black students should be in school. Instead, they have gathered to march for civil rights. Some are less than ten years old. Most are teenagers. They are football players, homecoming queens, track stars, and cheerleaders. Most are nicely dressed, in button-down shirts and clean slacks for the boys, and dresses and bows for the girls.

The marchers number more than one thousand strong. All have skipped class to be here. Some of them even climbed over locked gates. Their goal is to experience something their parents have never known for a single day of their lives: an integrated Birmingham, where lunch counters, department stores, public restrooms, and water fountains are open to all.

The Children’s Crusade, as Newsweek magazine will call it, fans out and marches across acre-wide Kelly Ingram Park. “We’re going to walk, walk, walk,” they continue to chant. They are peaceful, almost spiritual. Yet electricity courses through the group, for what they are doing is completely illegal. “Freedom … Freedom … Freedom.”

The protesters plan to march into the white business district and peacefully enter stores and restaurants. More than six hundred students were arrested doing the same thing yesterday. The youngest was just eight years old. This earned the Children’s Crusade national recognition. About a thousand miles away, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy actually scolded the black civil rights leaders who had organized the children’s march, stating that “schoolchildren participating in street demonstrations is dangerous business. An injured, maimed or dead child is a price that none of us wants to pay.”

Even Malcolm X, one of the fieriest black leaders in America, railed against the Children’s Crusade, stating that “real men don’t put their children on the firing line.”

But these kids want to be here. Many have come against their parents’ wishes. Nothing can stop them. They know that if their mothers and fathers were to do the marching, their arrests could cause them to lose jobs, or days and weeks of income.

They know that this march is not just about public toilets; this march is an act of defiance. A few days before he took office, just four months ago, Alabama governor George Wallace made one thing crystal clear: “I’m gonna make race the basis of politics in this state, and I’m gonna make it the basis of politics in this country.” Later, at his inaugural, he proclaimed, “I have stood where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then that from this cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart of the great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom … Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us … In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.