About The champion newspaper. (Decatur, GA) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 10, 2019)
Tr :-$yfje Page 4B THE CHAMPION, THURSDAY, JANUARY 10 -16, 2019 Children became an integral group of the human rights movement when the Children's Crusade began on May 2. The plan was for college and high school students to demonstrate but many came with their younger brothers and sisters. Civil rights leaders disagreed whether to use students as part of the movement but public perception changed after photographs showed the children being arrested, sprayed by fire hoses, dodging K-9 units. Here a police officer takes away protest signs. Moments later firemen hosed demonstrators. 1963. Ed Jones, photographer. Librarian Mickey Harvey, who selected photos for the collection, stands beside her personal A1963 photo from what was called The Children’s Crusade in Birmingham shows a law enforcement officer taking protest favorite Standing Up for Change—African-American Women in the Civil Rights Movement. signs from young marchers. Exhibit highlights youth participation in Civil Rights Movement BY KATHY MITCHELL Mickey Harvey, the children’s librarian at Stonecrest Library, decided to pull together an exhibit of photographs from the Civil Rights Movement to give young visitors to the library visuals to help them understand events pivotal to American history. “There were so many great photos that I had to decide how to choose a manageable number,” Harvey recalled. “I noticed that many of the photos had children, teens and young adults who participated in meetings, marches and protests. I decided it might be especially interesting to those bom many years after the photos were taken to see how young some of the participants were in the early days of the movement.” Harvey selected 26 images, secured permission to display them, framed them and hung them on the walls surrounding the children’s section of the library. While historians and other observers may not agree on which years comprise the Civil Rights Movement, it often is a reference to the mobilization in the 1950s and ‘60s of Americans— Black Americans, especially—in opposition to discrimination that continued against African Americans almost 100 years after the abolition of slavery. The images for the Stonecrest collection are primarily from this period. “It’s surprising how contemporary these photos feel even though they are 50 or 60 years old. One young person commented on a photo of a young Black man being subdued by a White police officer that it looked like it might have been from the Black Lives Matter movement,” Harvey said. The librarian said her personal favorite among the photos was one captioned Standing Up for Change—African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement. “I take nothing away from Dr. Martin Luther King and the other men who were leaders in the movement, but it was a very patriarchal time. Women were seldom given credit for their courage and participation. In this picture you see women and young girls. They were beaten, hosed, jailed—even killed—right along with the adult men. That should be recognized,” she added. “In many cases, students and other young people did what their parents couldn’t do,” Harvey continued. “Older Black people knew they would lose their jobs and other things they needed to survive if they participated in marches and demonstrations. So often it was young people who took that role.” Images in the collection include children in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery Voters Rights March, an event called The Children’s Crusade in Birmingham, a lunch counter demonstration in North Carolina, young marchers on the grounds of the Washington Monument and a group gathered outside the funeral of the girls killed in the 1962 bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Although the exhibit opened Jan. 2, Harvey said she has already seen a lot of interest in it. “A woman brought her grandchild to get a library card and I invited her to view the exhibit. The grandmother started crying. She said the photos brought back so many memories for her.” Children—the target audience for the exhibit—are generations removed from the events captured in the photos, and Harvey said she hopes parents and grandparents will start a discussion with them about what went on during that period. She added that she made sure children’s books on the Civil Rights Movement and related topics are available for youngsters to check out and leam more about that aspect of history. Among the selections is Through My Eyes, written by Ruby Bridges, who at age 6 in 1960 became to first Black pupil at a Louisiana elementary school. The image of her striding boldly to school accompanied by U.S. marshals, is recorded in a famous Norman Rockwell painting. “The Civil Rights Movement still continues,” Harvey commented. “There is so much more that must be done before every American can enjoy the full rights of citizenship. I want young people to be inspired by those who have come before them and know even though they are young, they have a role to play.” The exhibit, Civil Rights in America, is on display during regular library hours at Stonecrest Library through Feb. 28. Children’s activity pages will be offered to exhibit visitors while supplies last. Stonecrest Library is located at 3123 Klondike Road, Lithonia.
