Role of Young People in the Civil Rights Movement
Ms. Henricks was involved in the segregation of Birmingham as a child. In her own words, here is her testimonial:
“The night before at a meeting, they told us we’d be arrested. I went home and told my mother that I wanted to go. She just said, ‘Okay.’ I was in third grade . . . I did not go to school the day that I went on the march. I was not nervous or scared. We started from Sixteenth Street Church . . . [We] marched about half a block. Then the police put us in paddy wagons, and we went to juvenile Hall. There were lots of kids, but I think I may have been the youngest child in there. I was nine . . . I was in jail seven days . . . We slept in little rooms with bunk beds. There were about twelve of us in a room . . . My parents could not get word to me for seven days.”