Audrey Faye Hendricks | |
---|---|
Born | Audrey Faye Hendricks 1953 |
Died | March 1, 2009 |
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Teacher |
Years active | 46 years and a 3d |
Organization | Southern Christian Leadership Conference |
Known for | The youngest known demonstrator to be incarcerated during the Civil Rights Movement |
Notable work | The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, A Young Civil Rights Activist 2017 by Cynthia Levinson [1] |
Audrey Faye Hendricks (born in 1953) is known as the youngest known demonstrator to be incarcerated during the Civil Rights Movement in 1963. At just nine years old, Audrey was involved in the Brown v. Board Education march with Civil Rights Leaders to establish that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional, being one of many children who were arrested and jailed. Audrey was also one of thousands of children involved in the Children's Crusade on May 2, 1963. [2]
Audrey Faye Hendricks was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1953 to Lola Mae Haynes and Joseph Hendricks, she also has a sister, Jan Hendricks Fuller. Audrey attended school at Center Street Elementary in Birmingham, Alabama. [3] Audrey's mother, Lola Mae Hendricks was a clerk-typist and a secretary working from Shuttlesworth's office at Bethel Baptist Church.
The Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that the segregated schools were unconstitutional in 1954. In 1961, Audrey's parents were among the Civil Rights Activists who won a lawsuit to integrate Birmingham's 67 parks, following to Police Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor's retaliated by closing the parks. [4]
In 1963, Audrey and other students from her school decided to walk out of class and join the march to Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church with the Civil Rights Leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. The students were organized into protest groups and marched the last four days in addition to demonstrating the discrimination in Birmingham. By May 6, Audrey was one of the approximately 2,000 children who were arrested and jailed in the Juvenile Hall, causing what is known as the Children's Crusade. This led to Hendricks being known as one of the youngest demonstrators to be incarcerated during the Civil Rights Movement. [5]
In 1969, about 15 years after the Brown v. Board of Education, Hendricks attended her first desegregated school. [6]
Later on after her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, Hendricks went to Bishop College and became a school teacher in Dallas, Texas. 8 years later, she was drawn back to Birmingham, Alabama, where she was helping children who were in low-income families, for 25 years. In 2007 she earned her master's degree.
Hendricks died in Birmingham, Alabama March 1, 2009 at 55 years old. [7]
January 17, 2017, Cynthia Levinson published The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, a Young Civil Rights Activist, a book about Audrey Faye Hendrick's life being a child involved with the Civil Rights Movement, as well as her journey and experiences through being an activist at such a young age. [8]
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement in the country. The movement had its origins in the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century and had its modern roots in the 1940s, although the movement made its largest legislative gains in the 1960s after years of direct actions and grassroots protests. The social movement's major nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience campaigns eventually secured new protections in federal law for the civil rights of all Americans.
The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was a terrorist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963 by a white supremacist terrorist group. Four members of a local Ku Klux Klan (KKK) chapter planted 19 sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device beneath the steps located on the east side of the church.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., who had a large role in the American civil rights movement.
Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor was an American politician who served as Commissioner of Public Safety for the city of Birmingham, Alabama, for more than two decades. A member of the Democratic Party, he strongly opposed the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Under the city commission government, Connor had responsibility for administrative oversight of the Birmingham Fire Department and the Birmingham Police Department, which also had their own chiefs.
Freddie Lee Shuttlesworth was an American civil rights activist who led the fight against segregation and other forms of racism as a minister in Birmingham, Alabama. He was a co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, initiated and was instrumental in the 1963 Birmingham Campaign, and continued to work against racism and for alleviation of the problems of the homeless in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he took up a pastorate in 1961. He returned to Birmingham after his retirement in 2007. He worked with Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement, though the two men often disagreed on tactics and approaches.
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The Birmingham campaign, also known as the Birmingham movement or Birmingham confrontation, was an American movement organized in early 1963 by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to bring attention to the integration efforts of African Americans in Birmingham, Alabama.
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The Children's Crusade, or Children's March, was a march by over 5,000 school students in Birmingham, Alabama on May 2–10, 1963. Initiated and organized by Rev. James Bevel, the purpose of the march was to walk downtown to talk to the mayor about segregation in their city. Many children left their schools and were arrested, set free, and then arrested again the next day. The marches were stopped by the head of police, Bull Connor, who brought fire hoses to ward off the children and set police dogs after the children. This event compelled President John F. Kennedy to publicly support federal civil rights legislation and eventually led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
James Luther Bevel was a minister and leader of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in the United States. As a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and then as its Director of Direct Action and Nonviolent Education, Bevel initiated, strategized, and developed SCLC's three major successes of the era: the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade, the 1965 Selma voting rights movement, and the 1966 Chicago open housing movement. He suggested that SCLC call for and join a March on Washington in 1963. Bevel strategized the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches, which contributed to Congressional passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The Birmingham Civil Rights District is an area of downtown Birmingham, Alabama where several significant events in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s took place. The district was designated by the City of Birmingham in 1992 and covers a six-block area.
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