Page 14 - WTP VOl. XII #1

It’s Time: Voices of Urgency and Celebration in Alabama and Mississippi
As Carolyn McKinstry told it to us on our first full day in Birmingham, Alabama, she awoke on
the morning of May 2, 1963 to hear DJ Shelley the Playboy broadcast a coded message, “Alright, my students, I hope you’ve got your toothbrushes packed, and you’re ready.”
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We were listening in rapt attention, as we sat in the pews of the Historic Bethel Baptist Church, the site of mass meetings in the 1950s and 60s civil rights movement. During those years, the church was led by the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, a central figure in the movement in Birmingham. The church and the adjoining parsonage were bombed three separate times, including Christmas night 1956, when the reverend and his family were fast asleep. Thankfully, they all survived.
It was March 2023, and I was traveling with a chorus—Sharing A New Song (SANS)—on a ten-day civil rights history and singing tour in Alabama and Mississippi, with a final day in Memphis, Tennessee. SANS’s mission is described in the following way: “Sharing A New Song celebrates the human spirit through choral music. Reaching across social and political boundaries to other countries and within the United States, Sharing A New Song promotes intercul- tural understanding and lasting relationships.” SANS, based outside Boston, Massachusetts, was originally established in 1983, during the Cold War, to build bridges between the people of the Soviet Union and the United States.
On this trip, we were a group of roughly sixty people—predominantly older white folks, includ-
ing me, with a few Black women and a smattering of younger people. Our chorus leader, Donnell Patter- son, a Black teacher, arranger, and composer, had written or arranged several of the songs we sang
on the trip. His indefatigable energy was a reliable source of inspiration for us, as we sang five concerts during our four days in Birmingham. Martha Bouyer of Out of the Box tours led us on this journey. She hails from Birmingham, and she had arranged for us to meet a number of people who were active in the civil rights movement, including her friend Carolyn McKinstry, who told us the story of that day in 1963.
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Students had been waiting for the coded “tooth- brush” message from the DJ, preparing for this day
in training sessions held in local churches. They knew that packing their toothbrushes meant that they needed to be ready to go to jail. Soon after hearing the message, student organizers rushed to stand outside Parker High School with large signs that read: IT’S TIME. Thousands poured out of their classrooms from schools across the city, marching to Kelly Ingram Park in what came to be known as the Children’s Crusade. At the park, they were met by the Public Safety Commissioner, Bull Connor, and with water cannons and growling German Shepherds. Carolyn, at age fifteen, had part of her hair torn off by the force of the water. Close to one thousand children were arrested.
Janice Kelsey, one of the children arrested that day, spoke to us later about the mass meetings she attended with the Reverend James Bevel of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Bevel had conceived of the Children’s Crusade after demonstrations against segregation led by Martin Luther King failed to galvanize the adult community, many of whom worried about repercussions, includ- ing the loss of their jobs. Bevel began by asking the students a series of questions designed to highlight the inequities in their schools, for example, asking them about the copyright dates in their textbooks and comparing them to the new books in white schools. He questioned them about the quality of the football team’s equipment and noted that what they received at their school were hand-me-downs from a local white school. In terms of their lives outside of school, he asked them whether they were able to
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Peter thorlichen