This is a guest opinion column

In the Spring of 1963, there were many that feared that the campaign launched by Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth’s Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference was coming to an end. Dr. King had been arrested and had penned his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in response to the many white religious leaders who felt that the protests were untimely and untoward. Community support within the Black community was waning as well. The numbers of men and women who were willing and able to put themselves and their jobs at risk in protest of racial segregation were dwindling. Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene “Bull” Connor was bullying, and southern U.S. Senators were filibustering to prevent the passage of any meaningful federal civil rights legislation. Nevertheless, this week in May 1963, children stood within the gap.

May 2-10 is the 60-year anniversary of what we remember as the Children’s Crusade of Birmingham. At the prompting of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee activist James Bevel, thousands of young people ages 7-18 years walked out of school, mobilized at the 16th Street Baptist Church and decided to face fire hoses, police dogs and mass arrests in protest of racial segregation and in pursuit of racial justice. The courage of the Children’s Crusade is said to have convinced President Kennedy to support legislation that would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964 desegregating public accommodations. The children of the 1960′s were incredible. Young people changed the world — again.

As we listen to the testimonies of the now senior citizen, movement foot soldiers, it would be tempting to romantically imagine that the youth of the 1963 represented a “special generation” never known before or to be seen again in our history. That would represent a misread of history. In 1961, the anti-colonial psychiatrist Franz Fanon observed, “Each generation must out of relative obscurity discover its own mission, fulfill it or betray it.” This same week in May of 1961, young people launched the first Freedom Rides. In May 2020, in the face of the public execution of George Floyd, young people declaring that “Black Lives Matter” launched and led the longest, sustained mass public protest movement in the history of this country. As holy scripture reminds, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

At their best, our children in every generation step into the calling as not only the shapers of the future but simultaneously represent the promise of the very present moment. History is made in the present tense. At the end of this week, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute is inviting young people to “reenact” the Children’s Crusade of 1963. This type of programming is essential. Remembering where we have been helps us develop a clearer vision of where we need to go today. My prayer is that in 2023 our children will continue to discover their mission and advance new and even more creative ways to change the world yet again.

Reverend Lukata Mjumbe is executive director of the Alabama African American Civil Rights Heritage Sites Consortium