Amity Middle School Orange Book Blog

Birmingham, Alabama May 1963. We’ve Got a Job tells the powerful story of the Birmingham Children’s March through the eyes of four of its participants—Audrey Hendricks, Washington Booker III, James Stewart, and Arnetta Streeter.

Archival photographs are interspersed with the story of what took place in 1963. It was hot, hot, hot! Segregation was enforced by a white policeman named Bull Connor. As commissioner of public safety, he oversaw the police and fire departments, public schools, libraries, and the health department. He was determined to keep blacks as second place citizens.

When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked for the youth to march, they answered his call. The object was to fill the jails and overwhelm the system using a nonviolent approach. The jails were stifling hot—so crowded that there wasn’t room to sit. Some of the children remained in these deplorable conditions for over six days.

Read these personal accounts of what this turbulent time was like for those that survived it.