Than the students. Let me try this one more time. Good morning. Hows it feel, berman . Hey. One more time. How does it feel . Birmingham. Oh, these foot soldiers still louder than these students. Lets one more time. Come on, birmingham. Hows feel . Oh, look, i am hype woman. Im sorry. No, im not. My name is dr. Samantha elliot briggs, and i serve as one of the Vice President s of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. And we are grateful that you are here with us today. Give yourselves a round of applause. This is a historic moment birmingham. This is the 68th anniversary of. 1963 childrens march. We are standing in one of the most important and spaces in our city now at 16th Street Baptist Church. I am so grateful that you all that your School Leaders that your families allowed you to share in this space with us today. I am so grateful that reverend price welcomed us into his home. I am so that our president and ceo, the one ill thompson allowed us to have this opportunity. And i am so grateful to the city leaders, to all the education and partners to our business and community partners. Im grateful to our team, bci. Im grateful to cspan for covering this event today. And for these foot soldiers, foot soldiers. Would you mind just standing up and being recognized right off the top. Come on, birmingham, yall. Youre going to do than that. Lets lets stand up for these foot soldiers. These people put birmingham on map without there ever. You are wouldnt be able to do what you do. Please get up on your feet for these people. These are your. With that respect being held, im going to pass the mic to my colleague here, our director of education, mr. Charles woods. The third. To get us along way. Now just have. Okay. All right. Greetings. I asked my boss just now as will pass me my so i carry my papers. He said no. So guess im freaked out. Oh i just want to say thank you to, everyone. Being here today. This is a program that i came up with six years ago to try and honor our foot soldiers, but also make the connection with our youth to our elders and our foot soldiers. Its its important that foot soldiers are here to show young people that it can be done. So okay. That they didnt do that. Yall cant do today. And i wanted to make that. We were able to bridge the gap between two generations. Thats the real important part. But if im if i can be totally candid and truthful, its you young people that are really the important people here today. Okay. So give yourselves a round of applause again. If you have not been to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. You all need to come. If a student at jefferson county, you can come free with your parents and youre adults will have to pay. So let that be a motivator for you to come and learn this history that. These great individuals participated in 60 years ago and many that are still participating. Okay. Many of our foot soldiers are still foot soldiers and still activists. And theyre out there every day. And so today i have a few things that i have to let you all know about how your day is going to proceed today. But i also had a whole lot of other stuff that i was going to say that was on that paper that my boss wont let me go grab. So whenever you. Today is a conference now program. You all will be engaged with several different individuals that will be teaching you very pertinent information. Now, one thing that everyone should have should be in your area or your zone is one of these papers right here with a qr code on it. I know at school you cant use your phones, but you can pull those phones out and scan the qr code and then put them back. Okay i dont want you engaging your phone, but dont do that now. Just make sure you find it. But dont scan that qr now because its a survey after. You you have a Previous Survey and then an after event survey. The way this is going to go is that once these individuals engage you throughout the day around 1230, were going to have a out of this building. You see in your pews. Chaperons, please designate student to hold those signs as we march when, we leave the church. We will go across the street. We will go around kelly ingram park and then into the park where lunch will be distributed for you. Okay, everybody got that . All right. Anything else in particular i need to add, dr. Briggs . Okay. I dont. My paper. Yes, maam. So one thing that i will add is qr sheets should be in the pews, not in bags. And they are shareable. They are not one per person. So once you scan the codes, pass it to your neighbor, make sure that they have scanned their codes and additional note would be take your pre survey before we get underway with the program. Thats the first one on the sheet and a third note that we need to emphasize in your there is a National Park service resource. There are pages that booklet that are related to the childrens march between and the time that were in the resource fair. If you complete those pages, you can turn it into our park service, our park ranger for junior ranger badge as well as a t shirt. So thats just to keep in mind. But you have until 2 00 to get that done. So. All right. Next up on your homework. All right. Last thing ill say that my myself and my colleagues, we have a very special job this. Job that i work every day is my dream job. Its something that ive thought about for years. And i get to teach young people every day about the history thats so to me. And so i just wanted to add that my colleague, mr. Barry mcnealy and dr. Briggs and others, we get to educate the president about the past in order to enhance the future. And thats why were here and thats what this is all about. And so thank you. Coming up next, we have mr. Nicks. He is author of you have to be prepared to die before you can begin to live. Wait. Im sorry. Im great. Im jumping in the program. Im sorry. Next we have bring in welcomes the passage this Church Reverend altar price. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. I want to welcome you to the 16th Street Baptist Church here at 16th Street Baptist Church. Jesus christ is the main attraction. 60 years ago, the attraction of this church was the stomp out injustice, inequity and any equality. Dr. Shuttlesworth asked dr. King to come to birmingham. They had some lunch counter sit ins that get a whole lot of fanfare. But on good friday, dr. King was arrested. He penned this letter from the birmingham jail. But while dr. King was in jail, his lieutenants had the bright idea to get the children involved in the movement. And these future soldiers were your at that time. And they got involved in the movement and they packed this church way. The church is packed right now. And when dr. Taught them how to protest nonviolently, dr. King had two overall objectives. One was to fill up the jails in birmingham. So kids like you walked out of these doors, 50 at a time and they were met by billy clubs, they were met by fire hoses. They were by police dogs, and they were taken to jail and they were ready to go to jail. And the second objective of dr. King was to make sure that this event in birmingham got on this very new called television, because in 1963, there was no facebook, no snapchat, no. So they made sure they it on television, got the attention of the president emboldened to tell his brother they broke a deal and that the king was emboldened. Do the march on washington. We here today because in 1963 those efforts soldiers taught us some lessons. And 1963, they touched some lives. And 1963, they transformed this land. And if they could do it, you can do it, too. So welcome. Six the history. How are we going to come up here today . Morning, everyone. My name is paul kicks. Im the author. You have to be prepared to die before you can begin to live ten weeks in birmingham. That changed america. I am white. My wife is black. I come from rural. My wife comes from houston. Why am i here today to talk with you about what happened, 60 years ago this week . Its very simple. Everything changed in america because of the spring. Of 1963. That was a message that i first my wife and i first tried to relay to our kids. And maybe the best way for you all to understand why i wanted to tell this story, why im here. Lets go back to another image. In june of 2020, george floyd being by officer derek chauvin. As i said, my wife, son issues from inner city houston. She grew up one neighborhood over from george. George up in third ward. Sanneh grew up in fifth ward. George sonja were the same age 46. Sonia had friends, relatives. Dear, dear cousins who went to yates high, georges high school. Sonias cousin. Derek knew george back then, knew him as the tight end on state championship plane Football Team at yates high. We have three kids at the time, twin boys were nine. Our was 11 years old and tell you all of this because george murder felt personal to us because of sonyas connection to houston, to that neighborhood. And as a result of that georges murder was the first time that we as parents did not shield our kids from black men and black women who are being killed by Law Enforcement officers whose deaths were captured by body cam footage or cell phones. Georges murder was the first time that we all sat on cnn and we watched him die. Our kids had a lot of questions about that. Our twin boys in particular were nine again at the time. The questions very quickly from are all cops racist. Kind of took a step down to selfhatred. Why did that happen to him . Well, Something Like that happened to me. Am i inferior to sonia . And i did our best to try to stem that. We love you. You can do whatever you in this life. But it didnt really. The latter half of 2020 was a very difficult time for our family, as it was for many people in america. I dont think that our lives are perhaps all that different from yours. Later that summer, when jacob blake, away from kenosha, wisconsin, cops and those cops shot him the back seven times while his three kids scream from his car. Our twin boys, that coverage, too. And what they said was, why do they keep trying to kill us . And they ran away from the room in tears. They became so despondent. In the latter half of 2020. We wanted to try to find a way to boogey them. We wanted to try to find a story that would tell them about faith and resilience and courage. Now again, i am a white man. I grew up on a farm in rural iowa after. The twins were born in particular. I started read a lot of the black canon. I started to read a lot of the Civil Rights Movement. And if you Flash Forward now to 2020 when the boys are nine, i had a sense for one story that i thought was the most amazing story in the whole of america, because from 1863 until nine 1863, nothing, nothing changed. I shouldnt say that. Of course. Let me start again. Of course. Emancipation. But by way of civil rights, by way of civil, nothing improved. If you if you if you kids particular get a chance to spend some time at the bukhari or spend some time at the Public Library and research what happened here in birmingham at the turn of the 20th century into the time that people the reverend fred shuttlesworth, were trying to lead the fight for civil rights. They will those documents will tell you. It was second class citizenship at best. Very little had changed. So to go back 63 to 1963, no real fight. No, no, no real fight, whatever could ever really capture the attention of the nation and change america from. 1963, everything. And the story that i wanted to tell my kids was the story that i want to tell you briefly here today. Everything changes because of ten weeks in birmingham and everything because of the people who are here today. Everything changes in measure because of what happened in early may. You can say that these ten weeks of this of the Birmingham Campaign are the most critical weeks in the whole of the 20th century. I firmly believe that. I think you can go even more specific. The first week of may is the week that all of america changes forever. It takes a long time it takes a. It took a long time. But after that, the kennedy brothers sponsor civil rights legislation in june of 1963, that sponsorship becomes a Civil Rights Act of 1964. That leads to the Voting Rights act of 1965. That leads to kings death in 1968 and a new life for his country. Not only the ability for a truly choose me, for church, for Shirley Chisholm to run for president , not only the rise, the black, middle and upper class, not only the presidency of barack obama, but the ability for me as a white man to marry the woman i love in a former jim crow state like texas and to raise our kids on a shaded street where nobody harasses us for who we are. Birmingham changes everything, and the first week in may is where everythings starts. This is hallowed, hallowed ground. I, i know where. Theres just a few other things i want to share because weve all seen the footage of birmingham and you have seen that those grainy images, what these foot foot soldiers did. But i want to try to contextualize this just for a minute if i can, especially for the kids here today, because this a discussion that ive now had with my own teenage children about what these people did when they were your age. Lets actually start with the fire hoses. You see those images of those kids and you think that that must have hurt those fire hoses. And these these people can tell you this. They were mounted on massive metal tripods as if it were artillery, as the force of a cannon was going to rush out. And it was manned by one firefighter or two. Firefighter. If you go back and look at the images, the raw footage, those fire hoses were manned by cops. Excuse me, three cops or four, three or four cops or three firefighters or four or four for firefighters. Excuse me the power that came out of those fire of that water water. It was enough to brick loose from mortar. It enough to the bark from a tree at, a distance of more than 100 feet. And let me tell you about this. These people here today and people who are in the footage that day, what the what that grainy images wont tell you. These people are hit at a distance of less, 50 feet, less than 50 feet. There are people who talked about when they went out in the line, they could hear the water across other people and then it would hit them and it would hit their hairline and it would rip the hair straight from the roots. Effectively, scalp them right outside. 60 years ago, the raw footage would show when the water hit them, kids would just sort of back flip in air and land flat on their stomach. The water hoses would disintegrate, the clothes off of children. There was one girl who cartwheeled end, end, over, end, because thats what the water kept doing to her. One of the most painful things that i saw from the raw footage was a girl about 14 or 15 years old. The clothes around her. The firefighters. Three, three firefighters focusing the hose on her. Shes maybe ten feet away. And they have the cruelty to keep it her and move her. They effectively slide her down the street, 50, 60, 70 feet. And shes just screaming pain and agony. Then there are the dogs. Lets talk for just a second about the dogs, because you see images out there of what that was. The Birmingham Police department had one black German Shepherd whose name was the nword. And these people, some of some of the people who talked in the oral project, theyll tell you that that was vicious. He was he he would he would grab somebody by the neck and thrash back and forth. People were feasted on by these dogs. It was horrendous. There were World War Two era reporters and photographers, the National Media here. And these people said, they had not seen anything like birmingham, alabama, even in war. Zones 60 years ago, right up the street and kelly ingram park. Thats where that happened. So why now . Do you understand what that was actually like . Heres what happened as a result . These brave people had the courage that you all have. Its within all of us. We can channel it. We can be as brave as. As everyone in front. In the front row here was. Because what they fought for that day was a chance so that all of could see what most hateful, racist place in america could do and that hateful racist place represented in some measure racism throughout all of america. And the foot soldiers here today. They what they did so that america could change. One of the most remarkable things, if i could just say. I just want to say in closing that reading through the oral histories spent a tremendous amount of time of the past couple of years, reading through all the oral histories of so many of you. And one consistent message is that they you all, as teenagers, wanted to change, not only your life would be better. But so the lives of everyone else would be better. And i am here today as proof of what you all did. So thank you all. Thank you. Thank you all. And. All right. Thank you so much, mr. Nicks. Now were going to have greetings. First, well have ms. Paulette roby executive, director of the Civil Rights Activist committee, directly following her will be counsel in j t moore and then directly following him will be the president and ceo of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. President , do want to al thompson it. Thank you. Good morning and welcome. As we gather today to commemorate 60 years of the childrens march on these very steps in may of 1963, more than thousand africanamerican students left this church to march downtown birmingham, and hundreds were arrested. These children was margin for the right to live in a desegregated where they did not have fear. Being blessed by fowls and attacked by Police Officers and dogs. These brave foot soldiers heard the clarion call of reverend fred shuttlesworth. Dr. Martin luther king and s. C. Elsie organizer james bevel. They will margin in singing aint going to let nobody turn me around. So again, i say welcome to the day of memories paying homage and, cameras, commemorations to all participants. The childrens march of 1963. And thats we are here today so that we will always remember the childrens in this city and never, ever forget it. Were glad youre here. Sit back. Enjoy the program. Other related festivities. Welcome. Good morning. How yall doing . Oh, man, i got to give me more energy than t