The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. started the third day of the Clearwater High Civil Rights Tour. On Sept. 15, 1963, a bomb exploded before Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church, a predominantly black church that served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders. Four young girls were killed and many other people injured. Because of the deaths of the four girls, there was a violent clash between protesters and police that helped draw national attention to the struggle for civil rights for blacks.
After visiting the 16th Street Baptist Church, Clearwater High students were given an impromptu tour of the city that took them along Center Street, better known as Dynamite Hill. Between the late 1940s and the mid 60s, white supremacists used to bomb the houses of the black families who lived along the street.
Thirty-two students from Clearwater High participated in the Clearwater High Civil Rights Tour, a project-based personalized learning opportunity. This is the second year for the tour. Throughout this school year, students have taken a class that has allowed them to study and research the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.
The culmination of this project was an in-depth tour of sites with historical significance for the Civil Rights Movement. Students visited Atlanta, Ga.; Birmingham, Ala. and Memphis, Tenn. The trip started Saturday, March 11 and concluded Tuesday, March 14. Clearwater High students planned the trip and met people who were key stakeholders, active participants and spectators of these important events. No professional tour guides were utilized.
Miles College, a historically black college in Birmingham, hosted the Clearwater High students for lunch. Several people who grew up in Birmingham discussed how life was growing up in the city during the Civil Rights era. A tour of the college was also provided.
The day ended at Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church. There, the students had dinner and listened to Janice Kelsey who in 1963 was part of the Civil Rights Movement Children’s Crusade. Children and teenagers marched in protest of segregation. Kelsey was an eleventh-grader and spent four days in jail. Kelsey told the Clearwater High students that she harbored no anger or bitterness towards anyone for what happened to her during her childhood. But she did give some caution.
“Laws can change and they have,” she said. “But what matters is what’s in your heart. What really matters are the changes that occur in people’s hearts.”
