Young Allies: White Children Who Questioned Segregation

TEACHERS, PLEASE READ ... A 6-minute classroom-ready video on: “Young Allies: White Children Who Questioned Segregation” (6 Minutes, 7 Seconds)    • Young Allies: White Children Who Questione...   Excerpts from oral histories enhanced with primary-source historic photos tell the stories of white people who, as children and teenagers in Birmingham, questioned the strict segregation and indignities they witnessed that were designed to make African Americans feel “less than.” The speakers describe their personal childhood experiences, including:  Finding it nonsensical that Blacks and whites were expected to drink from different water fountains  Asking the family’s maid why she had to come to the back door or didn’t enter a restaurant with the family  Questioning why the Southern manners that required a white man to offer his bus seat to a white woman, did not apply for a Black woman, especially if she were coming home tired from a long day working as a maid  Recognizing now how “almost revolutionary” it was for him to have attended a white church that exhibited not a trace of racial bigotry, saving him from the systematic prejudice to which the majority of his white friends were introduced at the family dinner table and in church  Feeling like the only one in his community who was raised by liberal parents  Walking “into a sea of racism,” beyond her own home, where neighbor children were not allowed to use racial epithets; and being confused about how she might “respectfully disagree” with other adults, to whom she was to show respect  Reasoning, early on that since, like the abolitionists she read about and admired, she would have been opposed to slavery in the 1800s, it was logical to stand up against prejudice. The speakers all lived in or near Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1950s and 1960s, and were interviewed in the 2020s. The oral history interviews are from:  Dr. Katherine Ramge  Elizabeth MacQueen  Dr. Marcia Herman-Giddens  Howell Raines  David Walbert  Pamela Walbert Montenaro  Virginia Volker PHOTOS: Library of Congress ACCOMPANYING TEACHING GUIDE available at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g... PRODUCED BY: Bending the Arc Project in collaboration with Kids in Birmingham 1963 and Sandpiper Advisory Group This video is one of a series of classroom-ready, short videos, offering clips from oral histories together with primary sources, many from the Library of Congress. For a list of the civil rights themes these videos offer for teachers, see: https://bit.ly/video-shorts-AL-civil-... FUNDED BY a grant from the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Southern Region program, managed by the Center for Historic Preservation at Middle Tennessee State University. Content created and featured in partnership with the TPS program does not indicate an endorsement by the Library of Congress. 2026.