 [dramatic tone]
- [laughs]
Hey, guys.
I'm Crissle West, and today
we're going to talk about
the Birmingham children's march.
- Cheers, Crissle.
- [laughs]
Let's march.
- Mm.
- Delicious!
- All right, so where does
our story begin?
- [bleep].
Who knows.
- [laughs]
- So our story begins in 1963
in Alabama,
 where racism is so deeply
 embedded in the community.
 But the breaking point
 for Gwendolyn Sanders
 was when she realized,
 in the 7th grade,
 that her textbook
 had previously been used
 by a white 5th grader.
 And she's like,
 I knew I wasn't allowed to go
 to the same movie theaters and
 shit like that as white people,
 but y'all are giving
 us raggedy, old textbooks
 that you were giving
 your 5th graders.
 Like, not only do you not
 give a [bleep] about me
 or my people,
 you don't give a [bleep] about
 my education, either.
 [classic rock music]
So she realized then that
things needed to change
and she wanted to be a part
of it.
 ♪ ♪
So around the time
that this story sh--starts--
sharts.
[laughs]
- It sharted.
- Oh, no!
Don't let the story shart!
- [laughs]
 - So around this same time,
 Martin Luther King, Jr.
 was urging the newly elected
 President Kennedy, like, man,
 we need some official
 legislation to stop
 the bullshit that's happening
 to black people.
 Like, you need to get involved.
 You're the [bleep] president.
And Kennedy sympathized.
 He was like, you know,
 I agree with you,
 but the party is still made up
 of poor, white,
 Southern voters,
 and I cannot alienate them,
which doesn't that sound
super familiar?
- It sounds a little similar.
- And kind of distressing?
Right.
 So Dr. King is using
 the 16th Street Baptist Church
 to try to organize protests.
 And Martin Luther King being,
 like, yo, for real though,
 it's time for us
 to do something.
 And the adults were like,
 listen,
 it's not that
 we don't agree with you,
 but at the end of the day
 I still have to put
 food on the table and pay
 the rent in this hoe,
 and I don't want them
 burning crosses on my lawn
 or any shit like that,
 so--like, bitch,
 it's not [bleep] safe!
 We can't do this!
 And Dr. King was like,
 if we can't enact change
 in Birmingham,
 we can't do it anywhere.
 Who can join in the protest
 and get arrested with us?
 [light piano music]
 And he was sort of shocked
 to see Gwendolyn Sanders
 and her sisters get up and say,
 "You know what?
 "We'll do it.
 We will do something
 about this."
 And then more and more kids
 stood up to volunteer.
 They decided to mobilize,
 so that's exactly
 what they did.
 They went back to school,
 like, listen,
 we know y'all are sick
 of the racism,
 and there's something
 we can actually do about it.
And on May 2nd, they--
the protest went down.
 And administrators started
 locking the doors
 to keep them from getting out,
 and kids would just straight up
 jump out the window.
 Like, bitch,
 you not gonna keep us here.
 And over 1,000 kids left school
 to go to
 Kelly Ingram Park to protest.
 [tense music]
 But then Bull Connor,
the head of the Birmingham
Police Department, was like,
 okay, well, y'alls black asses
 can go to jail.
 So they started carting
 these kids off by the dozens,
 and over 1,000 kids were
 arrested on that first day,
which is insane.
 And after a few days
 of protest,
 the Birmingham jails
 are totally overcrowded.
 So as more kids are arrested,
 others come back out
 to take up their place.
But on May 5th, that was when
shit got really real.
 Bull Connor was looking at
 hundreds of black kids
 standing up to his bullshit.
 He's like,
 let's bring out the hoses.
 And these
 are high-pressure,
 knock-you-the-[bleep]-out
 water hoses.
 But the kids realized that
 there's strength in numbers
 and togetherness matters,
 so those kids linked hands
 and said,
 "Not today, bitch.
 Not today."
 So Bull Connor decides,
 oh, okay.
 Release the K9 units
 so that the dogs can
 [bleep] these kids up.
[coughs]
 Excuse me.
 [laughs]
 And at this point,
 there were news crews there
 that caught the entire
 situation on camera,
 and these are now some of
 the most infamous shots
 of the Civil Rights movement.
 And after people saw children
 on international TV
 being sprayed with hoses
 and attacked by dogs,
a mind shift occurred,
 and after eight solid days
 of protest,
 President Kennedy felt
 motivated to come out and say,
 "You know what?
 "I didn't want to say it before
 "because of the Southern
 white voters,
 "but them mother[bleep]
 are racist,
 "so it's time to just be real.
 "This shit that
 you are going out here
 and doing to people in my name
 is not the [bleep] okay."
 [triumphant music]
Oh, man, I love drinking.
 How come I don't do this more?
[laughs]
[both laughing]
Whoo!
- [laughs]
- So anyway,
who was I talking about?
The kids.
- Yeah, yeah.
- So after the success of
the Birmingham children's march,
 Dr. King decided to ride
 that momentum,
 and he gave his
 "I Have a Dream" speech.
 Bull Connor was fired,
 and the Civil Rights Act
 was passed within
 a year of all that,
 so it was monumental
 that Gwendolyn Sanders
 and these kids
 were willing to say
 this is not a [bleep] game,
 and you won't treat us
 and our people this way
 because we're here
 and this is what's going on,
 and it's time for us
 to stand up too.
And so I don't have to worry
about that sort of thing
the way those kids even did
or their parents even did,
and I don't take that
for granted.
- Cheers to the kids!
- Cheers to the kids.
[glasses clink]
- All right.
- This is gone.
I'm not drinking shit else!
- No!
No more.
- I'm done, Viacom!
[laughter]
 ♪ ♪
