Neither Civil nor Right: Birmingham Children's Crusade 55 Years Later
As a product of the legacy of Civil Rights activists, I know the story, the Civil Rights narrative well. Not only am I knowlegable, I am the daughter of a 1970 graduate of Jackson State University whose commencement ceremony never took place because of the specter of violent riots and civic unrest. I know the names of the major players: King, Abernathy, Jackson, Young. I know the well-publicized cities where cross-racial conflict reigned: Montgomery, Jackson, Selma, Birmingham. I know the atrocious tactics used to defend a segregated, separate and unequal society: fire hoses, dogs, bombs, arson, prohibitive voter registration techniques. Even I, with my knowledge of the facts surrounding the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, was unprepared for the lessons of the first-person narratives from the students who marched in the Children’s Crusade for Freedom in Birmingham, Alabama.
What is truth?
For many, the outcome of the Civil Rights movement was neither civil, nor right. Can we imagine that the segregationists who believed that blacks and whites should live separate lives, a cultural apartheid joined together solely by economic necessity ceased to exist the day the courts determined segregation was unconstitutional? For the supporters of segregation, they found themselves labeled “racist”, “bigot”, small-minded, un-Christian, un-American. Somehow, the country decided that 400 years of slavery and 100 years of caste-heiracrchy could be reversed with a few landmark Supreme Court cases and national guard enforcement. The truth for many Americans was that their life experience, education and their ethical philosophy had left them unprepared to share their lives with persons they considered “other.” Truth for these Americans is that in the fifty-five years since the success of the Children’s Crusade for Freedom, they have found themselves and their way of life on the wrong side of the national narrative. Regionally, there might have been a brotherhood in the cause, but, nationally, no such home existed post Civil Rights.
Can we speak truth to power?
Protesters of many stripes, love to use the phrase, “Speak truth to power.” But, what is truth? In our relativist-leaning society, we want to believe that truth is in the eye of the beholder. However, to have a functional republic, minority rights must also be protected, even in the face of contrasting truths. When I was thirteen, I decided to explore the truth about student performance. Were elementary and secondary students’ performance in school affected by their zip code of residence, their socioeconomic status, their race? The study I performed in the city of San Diego determined that yes, all of these factors, neighborhood, family income, and race played a role in overall student performance. For me, at the time, that was my truth. Poor minorities who live in the wrong neighborhood performed worse in school (elementary, middle or high school) than those who were not poor, not minority, and lived in the right neighborhoods.
Reflecting on the grace with which the lving participants in the Birmingham Children’s Crusade for Freedom speak about their expereinces, being jailed, beaten, attacked by dogs, and later losing friends to bombings, one has to conclude that truth must be weighed. Truth has a cost. Is the segregationist view worth dooming a generation, or multiple generations to an inferior quality of life because thay don’t have access to the right neighborhoods, their families can’t earn higher incomes, or they were born the wrong color? So many people in our country live separate lives, advocate for self-inflicted apartheid because they feel the Civil Rights movement was neither civil nor right. How can we make progress toward a future of economic abundance if we can’t reconcile our truths?
