A Short Story: The Birmingham Children's March

Hello everyone!  February is Black History month and so I decided to write a story about the Birmingham Children's March.  This story is historical fiction but much of it is true including Gwendolyn Sanders, her sisters, her teacher, and her friends who you will meet later on.  

This is just part one of the story, part two coming next week!     

   

   

   

“I will do it, we will do it!” Gwendolyn was pulling her two sisters, Dot and Deborah, up to standing and squeezed their hands tights.  

“Gwendolyn, sit down,”  her mother tugged slightly on her skirt, aside from that, the room was completely silent.  Mr. Martin Luther seemed to gaze straight at her as the silence dragged on.  The congregation sat in awe as others joined Gwendolyn.  Other children, children of all ages stood with her.  She spun around the room, that was the moment she decided that yes, they could do this.   

“Yes, I think we can do this, I think this will impact everyone.”  He smiled at her and she realized, she may be young but she can do something small, maybe even something great.  

“Do not be discouraged, I am here looking for a peaceful resolution, not a violent one.”  

“Do you understand what this could lead to?”  Gwendolyn’s mother leaned down and shook her daughter’s shoulders.  She breathed in deeply, taking her time to respond. 

“Do you understand what else could happen if we don’t do something?  Mother, we have to do something,”  she was afraid, that can not be doubted, but she stood by her words.  “Don’t you remember Billy Smith?”  her mother started to chuckle but stopped when Gwendolyn’s face turned stone cold, there was nothing funny in this for her.  

“I am sorry, it’s not funny, just interesting how that is what made you come to this conclusion.”  

“Wait, what?”  They both flipped around to see her youngest sister standing in the doorway.  “No, who is Billy Smith,”  They hadn’t realized that Dot was standing there, they hadn’t realized that she had heard practically their entire conversation.  

Their mother crossed her arms in front of her as if to say, ‘now you have to explain.’  But Gwendolyn didn’t understand why she shouldn’t explain, Dot was eight, not ignorant.  

  She kneeled down, that way her sister was an inch or two taller before she began her story.  

“Two years ago, or was it three, I can’t remember, anyway that is not important.  It was the start of a new school semester and everyone in my class was getting new textbooks.  I was excited, well we all were excited, excited for the crisp new pages of something that had never been used before.  At least our teacher told us ‘new’.  

“I opened the book and in large ugly terrible letters was the name ‘Billy Smith,’.  My first thought was how awful his penmanship was.  And my second was that this couldn’t be.  We hadn’t used many textbooks until that point and the ones we did use were explicitly used.  You can probably imagine our disappointment.”  

Gwendolyn sunk down to the floor, allowing her skirt to surround her legs.  Studying her sister’s face she was searching for the same emotions she had felt that day, but she didn’t seem bothered.  

“Of course the white kids used the textbooks before us,”  She crossed her arms just as Gwenolyn’s jaw dropped.  

“And you think that’s normal and okay?”  

“Of course it’s normal.  Is it okay?” she shrugged, “I don’t know, it’s just the way it is,”  Gwendolyn was astounded by her sister’s point of view, astounded that anyone could think that.  

“But— “  she stood up again, not knowing if she would be able to convince her sister that this is wrong but wanting to try.  

“But it’s wrong, and if anyone is going to try and change, shouldn’t be us?  We’re going to be affected by things like this for the rest of our lives.”  She straightened her skirt and looked at her sister and mother.  Two people who, she knew, had the best intentions, but intentions don’t matter now.  

“Everything we get seems to be second best, it’s used just like those textbooks.  Something has to change and I want to be a part of it, even if I only do something small, I want to try.”  

February 4th, 1963

My sisters, some of my friends, and I have been going to meetings where Rev. James Bevel teaches us how to peacefully protest.  I enjoy each meeting, not because Rev. Bevel repeats most of the same things every day, even though he does do that, because of how encouraging it is.  It makes me feel, all of us feel like we can make a difference and do something.  

I have been thinking about keeping track of what happens over the next month in this diary, but I am not sure if I will be able to keep up with what is happening.  I like to think that years in the future someone may find this and know that I have been a part of something that will, hopefully, evoke change.  

Gwendolyn abruptly stopped writing in her diary.  She had been writing furiously and when she looked up she was torn back into the real world, in the middle of town on a little bench under a cherry tree.  She pulled her sweater tighter around her shoulders.  

Two water fountains sat just across the street, the same type she had seen so many other places.  One dirty and the other clean.  Some under the sign “white” and the other under the sign “colored.”  She realized once again how wrong that looked, and also how silly and inconvenient it is to make two.  

She began to move almost before she realized what she was going, she was tired of hesitation.  Stepping across the street she went straight to the water fountain on the left, the clean one.  She did something she had never done or even thought to do before.  

The street was cluttered, this was something she had not noticed a moment before.  A group of white boys were laughing just to her left and they didn’t hesitate either, like hurting a little black girl didn’t take any thought at all.  

They pushed her from the fountain as hard as they could, so hard that she fell away so easily, like she was not really a girl, just an inconvenience, a bug to swat away.  

“There’s a sign for a reason,” one spat at her.  

“The dirty one’s drink out of the dirty fountain, it’s not hard to remember,”  another added and the others just laughed.  She realized that this would be a perfect time to practice the non-violent protesting techniques.  ‘Everyone has a different way of reminding themselves not to turn to violence,’ Rev. Bevel had said.  Her group had been encouraged to imagine themselves in a situation where they could choose to be violent or not and to pick a phrase, idea, song, or envisionment to hold them back.  

Gwendolyn thought of something her mother once told her when she was in the middle of a heated fight with her sister.  Something she had probably repeated to her sister too, but that is beside the point.  “By staying calm and choosing not to fight you are being the bigger person, you are being more mature in the situation.’  She had told her daughters that during a time when Gwendolyn wanted to be treated equally with her mentors and peers, to be talked to like she understood because she did.  It was during a time when she was getting sick of baby talk, she was young but she understood what her mother meant perfectly.  

“I am the bigger person, I am being mature and they are being immature.  By walking away I am showing that they may be taller and bigger and stronger but they are the ones who should need ideas introduced to them like a baby,”  Gwendolyn muttered this to herself as she rushed back across the street, picked up her books down the street.  She forced herself not to cry as she left the snickers in her past.  

Minutes later when her heart stopped beating wildly, she slowed her pace, looked down, and realized for the first time that her knees were covered in blood.  Her knees began to throb, she collapsed into the nearest bench and fell into a fit of sobbing.  

Realizing that she would have to find a way to clean a little of the blood up, she tried to pull herself together and wiped her tears away with the edge of her sleeve.  Her mother would be even more scared and wary to let her march if she knew what happened.  So she sopped up the blood with her handkerchief and found a trash can before she arrived home.  

3/2/1963

I didn’t think I would be able to keep track of my days leading up to this one very well, it turns out that I was right.  Well, today is the day.  I am a recruiter, which means that for the past couple of weeks I have been working to alert the kids in my school about the march today.  Mr. William Douthan nicknamed “Meatball” is the signal to leave the building and march in the direction of the mayor’s office— 

Gwendolyn’s perfect script suddenly stopped as her ears seemed to prick up, a gentle melodic whistle came from just out the window.  She noticed a man lingering on the sidewalk.  She knew that man.  

Abruptly she stood up, the sewing she was supposed to be working on had been pushed to the side.  She almost laughed as she relayed her sewing class, her least favorite, would now be remembered as the class she was avoiding when everyone in her school left to march.  

She had knocked off two textbooks that had been balancing precariously on the edge of her desk.  Everyone in the class looked up from their needles, all Gwendylon could see was two words, “Billy Smith.”  Any nerves left inside her were gone now.  

“They don’t care about us or our education at all, it’s like we’re an inconvenience, that is all.”  She hadn’t meant to say it out loud but she did and all eyes were on her.  

Slowly, however, other children started standing up around them.  Gwendolyn leads the way to the door, and her teacher who sat at her desk most of the class, unless a student needed help, stood up, turned her back to the fleeing students, and began to make a list on the blackboard.  

Gwendolyn was thankful for this.  Thankful that at least one teacher would rather turn her back than report and try to stop them.  She wanted to thank her but didn’t have the time so she continued on and ran out into the hall.    

   

Thank you for reading!

Next week I will go over particular events that were true or not true from the story.

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