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closeMoving forward from lessons of the past
Woman arrested in the Children’s Crusade more than 40 years ago shares history with local students
Chris Albert
Audrey Hendricks never thought she would be marching again 45 years to the day after being arrested during the Civil Rights Movement’s Children Crusade in Birmingham, Ala.
But on May 2, the 54-year-old woman led the students and faculty of Mt. View Elementary in Edgewood in a march around the school’s track and gave a glimpse into the lessons of the Civil Rights Movement.
“It was wonderful,” Hendricks said of the Mt. View March. “We have to continue to teach children and expose them to our history. All of our history.”
Although not all causes are brought to the streets, Hendricks said, it is important to ask “How far will you go?”
The answer was a foregone conclusion for her when she was a 9-year-old girl in Alabama.
In 1963, Birmingham was a place struggling with equality. Although the Supreme Court ruled segregated schools were unconstitutional in 1954’s Brown vs. the Board of Education, schools and much of the area remained divided by color.
African Americans were discouraged to vote through voting tolls and absurd tests to get a ballot, like guessing the number of matches in a match box.
On May 2, 1963, Hendricks gathered at the head of a group of students by 16th Street Baptist Church. With her favorite board game Operation tucked under her arm, she began to march. She didn’t make it more than a block before she was arrested and detained in a juvenile facility for more than a week with other young demonstrators.
But she wasn’t afraid, she insists.
“When you are young you are kind of fearless,” Hendricks said.
There were moments of intimidation though. While in jail she was interviewed by several plain-clothed men. It was clear they were law enforcement of some kind, but to this day she isn’t sure if they were police or FBI agents.
They questioned her over and over again. They wanted to know who put her up to marching. They couldn’t believe a 9-year-old would demonstrate against oppression.
“At 9, I was at least able to process what was going on,” Hendricks said.
This is the second year Mt. View has held a Children’s Crusade. Last year was very powerful, said Principal Theresa Garrison, but she wanted to find a way to make the history of the Civil Rights become even more meaningful to the students.
“I just got this little needle in my mind and thought if I could find Audrey,” she said.
She did some research, made a few phone calls and Hendricks was on her way to Washington.
“It makes it come to life for kids,” Garrison said of having someone who was there at their school.
The Civil Rights movement is never far from the minds and hearts of people in America. Students at Mt. View Elementary are no exception, Garrison said.
The crusade is known as a defining moment in the movement where children marched for equality, justice and freedom.
The students she marched with at Mt. View weren’t alive during the Civil Rights Movement. Many of their parents weren’t even alive. Yet the 280 students marched boldly, sang loudly and held their signs high.
Like the march decades ago, students at Mt. View held signs with slogans calling for equality. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words of “I have a dream” streamed across banners and the students sang songs like “We Shall Overcome” and “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round.”
Before marching, Hendricks addressed the crowd and the school had a surprise for her — the board game Operation. She had it with her the day she was arrested decades ago.
With the game under her arm, Hendricks marched, leading the students at Mt. View and singing with them songs of freedom.
Before the Mt. View Children’s Crusade, Hendricks met with student leaders during lunch, where they asked questions about her life. Likewise, Hendricks’ interest was in finding out about the students and what they were passionate about.
Many answered they want to help animals and end animal cruelty. Hendricks told the students being active and passionate about a cause or belief can take many forms. Becoming educated in something that interests a person can be strong building blocks to pursue a positive change in this world.
“That’s another way to have passion for a cause,” she said. “It doesn’t always have to be demonstrated in the streets.”
A life of passion is what Garrison hopes for the students at Mt. View.
“That’s what you want your life to be, to live your life with passion,” she said.
Last year’s march was great, said sixth-grader Cheyenne Thomas, but having someone who was there explain what it was like made it more meaningful.
“I can’t believe a 9-year-old girl would have so much courage,” said sixth-grader Samantha Curnow.
It was at an earlier demonstration that she decided to fight the inequality of life in Birmingham. Both her parents were active in the movement. Civil Rights leaders would gather congregations of people in local churches, like 16th Street Baptist Church. They would sing, form strategies and re-energize their faith that progress could be achieved through peaceful protest.
It was after one of these mass meetings that Hendricks saw something that solidified her activism. A peaceful demonstration had started outside of the church. She was standing on the top steps of the building. Her gaze was stuck on an elderly man, singing about freedom in a crowd dotted with signs, not too unlike the ones Mt. View students held during their march.
Suddenly police officers released dogs on the peaceful old man. Hendricks couldn’t believe someone would hurt him just for singing about freedom.
“To me he could have been my grandfather,” she said.
It was common for many of the adult demonstrators to be attacked and arrested, she said. It is one of the reasons the Children’s Crusade began. The young were part of the movement for better or worse. Many adults struggled with letting the children get involved, because they feared for their safety, Hendricks said.
But they wouldn’t be stopped.
“I just felt I was doing what needed to be done,” she said.
So they marched, they sang, they believed. Many were arrested. It is estimated that by May 6 as many as 2,000 children were arrested and jailed. The images of children being attacked and jailed were broadcast around the country and a overwhelming cry for civil rights was heard. It helped accelerate the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing segregation and discrimination in all public schools.
It would not be until Hendricks’ freshman year in high school that she attended her first desegregated school. The year was 1969, 15 years after Brown vs. the Board of Education.
The Children’s Crusade in Edgewood was much different than her first.
“Then there were just black children (marching),” Hendricks said. “Today I saw white children, Asian children, Hispanic children together. That is something you would not have seen in 1963.”
As the students at Mt. View finished their march, they followed Hendricks onto the play area. They stood hand-in-hand and sang “We Shall Overcome.”
It was how mass meetings in Birmingham ended more than four decades ago.
“Where there has been progress there’s still work to be done,” Hendricks said. “In this school the seed has been planted and we’ll see the benefits as they go through life,”
“It felt really big,” Curnow said. “It was like having lunch with Justin Timberlake or something.”
Opening the door for students to understand the racial struggle of this country and finding ways to keep making it better is what the march was all about, Garrison said.
“They (the students) get it. They really get it,” she said. “Having her (Hendricks) here made the history come to life for them.”