Children Have Changed America Before, Braving Fire Hoses and Police Dogs for Civil Rights
The Florida teens who are organizing walkouts and marches after a mass shooting that killed 17 people at their high school are following in the footsteps of the hundreds of kids in Birmingham, Ala., who risked their lives to protest segregation in 1963
By Steven Levingston
The school gates were locked. But that didn’t keep hundreds of students from crawling up and over the fences, defying their parents, teachers and school principals to march against segregation.
It was May 1963 in Alabama, and Birmingham’s brutal public safety commissioner, Eugene “Bull” Connor, was waiting. His police moved in, herding the children into squad cars, paddy wagons and school buses for the trip to jail.
When the students kept coming, Connor turned fire hoses on them, knocking the children to the ground and spinning them down the street. To fight the high-powered blasts, some children joined hands trying to keep their balance in a human chain. But the torrents were too fierce; hit by the rocket-bursts of water the kids whirled one way, then the other, dragging down their…
