Analyzing Informational Text: 1963—The Year That Changed Everything

1963: The Year That Changed Everything

In 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution ended slavery. Nearly a century later, African Americans continued to struggle for equality under the law. A number of major events in this dramatic battle took place in 1963.

In April of that year—from behind the bars of a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote a message that would inspire countless others. King had been arrested for breaking a law banning public protest. His message, the famous “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” defends nonviolent resistance to injustice. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” King wrote. He added, “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

In early May, the young people of Birmingham took King’s message to heart. Disobeying a court order, more than 1,000 African American students marched from the 16th Street Baptist Church. The next day, the students marched through Kelly Ingram Park. They were met by an angry white mob as well as police who blasted them with water from fire hoses and terrified them with dogs. The teenagers were jailed in temporary cells at the county fairgrounds. On the seventh day of the Children’s Crusade, city officials agreed to negotiate with the African American community. A few days later, the two sides reached an agreement to end local segregation.

News of the Children’s Crusade spread in the media, helping to transform the way Americans saw the civil rights movement. The New York Times ran more stories about civil rights in the two weeks after the Children’s Crusade than it had in the previous two years combined. Scenes of children under attack were filmed and broadcast all over the world, setting off a global outcry. Polls showed that Americans across the land believed racial injustice was the nation’s biggest problem.

The struggle for civil rights continued to be marked by violence. On May 28, 1963, four African American college students in Jackson, Mississippi, were assaulted for sitting at a segregated lunch counter. Two weeks later, on June 12, an assassin killed civil rights activist Medgar Evers outside his home in Jackson.

That summer brought a landmark event in civil rights history. This was the March for Jobs and Freedom that took place in Washington, D.C., on August 28. Under the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech to a crowd of 200,000 people from all walks of life. The peace and hope of that event did not last long. On September 15, a bomb exploded inside Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church. The attack killed four little African American girls and injured twenty-two other people.

The struggle continued throughout 1963. The Southern Regional Council has records of protests that took place in more than 100 southern towns. Approximately 20,000 demonstrators were arrested. With words and actions, they delivered a demand for justice that could not be ignored.

In 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution ended slavery. Nearly a century later, African Americans continued to struggle for equality under the law. A number of major events in this dramatic battle took place in 1963.

In April of that year—from behind the bars of a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote a message that would inspire countless others. King had been arrested for breaking a law banning public protest. His message, the famous “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” defends nonviolent resistance to injustice. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” King wrote. He added, “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

“Polls showed that Americans across the land believed racial justice was the nation's biggest problem.”