The children’s parents feared they would lose their jobs if they protested discrimination Their children showed up at the church The group planned to march 0 5 miles 0 8 km to City Hall Few made it that far The children began a peaceful march White police officers tried to stop the demonstration But the children were determined They continued on The children wanted an end to segregation The police arrested hundreds of children and took them to jail in school buses They beat others with clubs or attacked them with police dogs The protests went on for more than one week The rest of the United States saw these events on the news The sight of peaceful protesters being attacked outraged many Americans The adults in charge of organizing the Alabama protest sat down with Birmingham officials and President John F Kennedy The city agreed to allow African Americans into downtown stores They also released the protesters from jail The protesters agreed to stop 6
Police officers blasted protesters in Birmingham with high-pressure fire hoses marching Although this was not a complete victory this event pushed the civil rights movement forward Separate Lives Life during the early 1960s was very different for African Americans and whites African Americans usually lived in poorer neighborhoods In many southern states laws kept African Americans from 7
Jim Crow Laws Jim Crow laws were in place from the 1880s through the 1960s They required that African Americans and whites use separate schools public places transportation restrooms and drinking fountains In some places African-American hospital patients were even kept separate from whites African-American public spaces were usually of lower quality than those reserved for whites 8 using the same facilities as whites Public areas such as grocery stores churches movie theaters schools and restaurants had separate areas for each race This was called segregation Some states also outlawed marriage between different races If African Americans broke these laws known as Jim Crow laws they were beaten or killed The laws were created to make African Americans feel like second-class citizens Civil rights workers and leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr worked to change these laws They scored a major Supreme Court victory in 1954 with Brown v Board of Education of Topeka The case outlawed segregation in schools
CIVIL RIGHTS VOICES Martin Luther King Jr when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters you can understand our impatience The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr helped lead the civil rights movement in the United States By using peaceful protests he drew attention to segregation and discrimination faced by African Americans His actions helped pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 In 1968 he was shot and killed in Tennessee 9 A large problem remained though Who would make schools and towns in the South obey the law Change came slowly Advocates of civil rights felt the progress was too slow A New President John F Kennedy became president in 1961 King and others hoped the new president would help their cause Seventy percent of African Americans voted for him But President Kennedy worried that acting on civil rights would cause him trouble Southern lawmakers might not support him Neither would whites across the country who supported segregation
