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Background reading · Social Sciences

Young people at the front: Montgomery to Selma

Teenagers and children were at the heart of the Civil Rights Movement. Their courage helped win two of the most important laws in US history.

When people think of the Civil Rights Movement they often picture Dr Martin Luther King Jr. He was a powerful leader, but the movement was carried by thousands of ordinary people, and many of them were young.

On the bus

In March 1955, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, and was arrested. Nine months later Rosa Parks, an experienced NAACP organiser, did the same. Black residents then refused to ride the buses for 381 days, walking and sharing cars, until the court ruled bus segregation illegal.

At school and at the lunch counter

  • The Little Rock Nine: in 1957, nine Black teenagers enrolled at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Angry crowds and the state's own soldiers blocked them, until the President sent federal troops to escort them in.
  • The Greensboro sit-in: on 1 February 1960, four first-year college students sat at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and asked to be served. They were refused, so they came back each day. Within weeks, students were holding sit-ins in dozens of cities. By July the counter served everyone.

    • The children's march

    In May 1963, more than a thousand school students in Birmingham, Alabama, walked out of class to march for equal rights. Hundreds were arrested. Police turned fire hoses and dogs on the marchers. People around the world saw it on television, and many who had stayed silent now demanded change.

    New laws

  • Civil Rights Act (2 July 1964): banned segregation in public places such as cafés, hotels and parks, and discrimination at work.
  • Voting Rights Act (6 August 1965): after marches from Selma to Montgomery, this law banned the unfair tests used to stop Black people voting.

    • These young people chose peaceful strategies, even when others used violence against them. Their choices are still studied by people working for change today.

    Sources and further reading

    Written for Kōkiri Learn students in our own words. Check facts against the sources.

    Used in: Standing Up: Civil Rights and Youth Voice