Michael Long - Kids on the March: 15 Stories of Speaking Out, Protesting, and Fighting for Justice

Algonquin Young Readers 2021

To all the courageous young people who have marched for a better world

Let us pray with our legs. Let us march in unison to the rhythm of justice, because I say enough is enough.

Demetri Hoth

Senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School

2018

Kids on the March

T oday, we march, we fight, we roar!

Delaney Tarr, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, spoke those powerful words at the student-led March for Our Lives in Washington, DC, on March 24, 2018.

Shed been freaking out just before her speech, but as she stood at the podium on the main stage, thousands of marchers saw a poised, confident, and determined young woman.

We know what we want, we know how to get it, and we are not waiting any longer! she declared. The crowd thundered its support.

Many of the marchers on that chilly spring day were elementary, middle, and high school students from across the country. Called together by the Parkland students, they had gathered at the nations capital to protest for gun control legislation that would help prevent the type of mass shooting that had occurred at Stoneman Douglas just a month earlier.

As Tarr continued her speech, countless kids raised their protest signs high: what do you like more, guns or kids? ; protest guns, not kids; and #enough is enough!

A short while later, Yolanda Renee King, the nine-year-old granddaughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, also spoke. She said, I have a dream that enough is enough and that this world should be a gun-free world, period!

Marchers who had studied her grandfather in history class probably recognized that her words echoed Dr. Kings most famous speech, I Have a Dream, which he gave at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. That day about 250,000 protesters demanded an end to racial segregation in businesses, schools, and workplaces.

When we think of protests in US history, we often call to mind Dr. King and his adult colleagues marching together for racial justice in the civil rights movement.

But did you know that many participants in the 1963 March on Washington were kids? Did you know, too, that several months before the March on Washington, thousands of young Black people marched against racial segregation in Birmingham, Alabama? Did you know that this was not the first time in US history that kids marched for justice?

Sixty years earlier, in 1903, child laborers marched from Philadelphia to New York to protest the dangerous working conditions in textile mills.

Even this early march was not the first of its kind.

Young people have led or participated in numerous marches throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Kids did not always play a leading role. They were mostly behind the scenes in the 1932 Bonus Army March, for example, but sometimes kids were the main organizers, the movers and shakers, as the Parkland kids were at the March for Our Lives.

Whether they led or followed, the kids in these historic marches were tough, bold, and brave. Some of these marches occurred in the face of violence, and others in relative safety, but all of them required courage.

When the Birmingham kids marched, local police officers turned their German shepherds on them. Firefighters blasted them with water from high-pressure hoses. But the kids marched on, demonstrating remarkable bravery in the face of life-threatening danger.

Other protests, like the March for Our Lives, occurred in peaceful settings, but even these commanded bravery. When Stoneman Douglas student Carly Novell prepared to march that day, she feared there would be gun violence. Still, she marched.

Unfortunately, courage has not always translated into success. Some marches succeeded in persuading legislators and the public, others failed, and still others set the stage for change farther down the road of history.

After President John F. Kennedy saw Birmingham police officers attacking the young marchers, he went on national television to denounce racial segregation and propose new legislation to help advance civil rightsexactly what the young people wanted.

In Florida, the March for Our Lives ultimately failed to persuade President Donald J. Trump to back new bills for gun control. Still, the march resulted in legislative success in several states, and it laid groundwork for future federal action.

Despite differences in style, settings, and success rates, the marches in which kids have participated are all deeply connected. They have sought to establish peace, justice, and freedom for all. Each has attempted to fulfill the civil rights identified in the US Constitution. Each has tried to hold the nation accountable to the beliefs and principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence.

As leaders and participants, kids have fought on the front lines of virtually every important march for first-class citizenship throughout US history. When democracy was threatened, kids were there. When people on the margins needed a voice of protest, kids were there. In some cases, kids were there, marching and chanting, long before adults even thought about protesting.

You, too, can march. If you dont like a law that causes suffering, or if you would like a new policy that could help create a better world, you, like the kids in this book, can stand up. You can straighten your shoulders. You can throw back your chin. And you can shout what young people have been shouting for decades: Lets march!

Authors note: Kids have participated in many more protests than those highlighted in this book. Theyve been on the front line in fights for LGBTQ+ rights, disability rights, and animal rights, just to name a few. As you read the pages ahead, think of other protests that you can add to the history of kids on the march.