A Talk to Teachers

In April 1963, the Children’s Crusade of Birmingham, Alabama, saw the nation’s youngest civil rights activists take to the streets to protest draconian police rule under commissioner Bull Conner. Throughout the protests, youth were arrested, assaulted with water hoses, and attacked by dogs. In the face of such extreme violence, they continued to march and fight.

On May 28, in Jackson, Mississippi, students trained in nonviolent protest staged sit-ins at Woolworth’s lunch counter. They were then attacked by angry white mobs. In June, after Alabama Governor George Wallace made a televised vow to defend segregation at all costs, President Kennedy made a speech of his own in which he promised to send a civil rights bill to Congress. On the heels of this, Medgar Evers, who was the state field director for the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) was murdered in his driveway on June 12. This was an event that devastated Baldwin. On August 28, thanks to the organizational expertise of leaders such as Bayard Rustin, the March on Washington took place.

Baldwin’s lifetime overlapped with more than just strides and regressions in the civil rights movement. When he writes that the society “in which we live is desperately menaced, not by Khrushchev, but from within” (Paragraph 1), he refers to enemies of equality such as Bull Connor and Governor Wallace.