Toward the end of April 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and fellow leaders of the civil rights movement faced a grim reality in Birmingham, Alabama. With deminished support and fewer volunteers, their campaign to end segregationist policies was teetering on failure. But when an unorthodox plan to recruit Black children to march was implemented, the movement reversed itself, reinvigorating the fight for racial equality, in what became known as the Children's Crusade. King had traveled to Birmingham in the spring of 1963, along with Southern Christian Leadership Conference co-founder Rev. Ralph Abernathy, hoping to shore up resistance against segregation in the state. The pair partnered with the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, a local civil rights organization led by Fred Shuttlesworth, a prominent minister and activist. After King was arrested and confined to a jail cell, where he wrote his famous work, LETTERS FROM A BIRMINGHAM JAIL, he knew, along with other activists, that a new strategy was essential if the campaign were to succeed. " The number of adults who were willing to volunteer, to get arrested, had steadily dwindled those last two weeks of April and it looked like the movement was about to fall apart," says Glenn Eskew, a history professor at Georgia State University and author of the 1997 book, BUT FOR BIRMINGHAM: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle. James Bevel, a member of SCLC, came up with an idea to include school-age children in protests to help desegregate Birmingham. The strategy involved recruiting popular teenagers from Black High Schools, such as the quarterbacks and the cheerleaders, who could influence their classmates to attend meetings with them at Black churches in Birmingham to learn about the non-violent movement. There was also an economic reason to have children participate since adults risked being fired from their jobs for missing work and protesting. King, along with other activists and members of the Black community were adamantly opposed to involving children in marches because of the threats of violence from white mobs, as well as from policemen . Bevel, undeterred, told the children to gather at 16th Street Baptist Church on May 2, 1963. More than 1,000 students skipped school to participate in the protests. The youth, ranging from ages 7-18, held picket signs and marched in groups of 10 to 50, singing freedom songs. "We were told that if you decide to participate that this is a nonviolent movement, so you can't fight back." As the children bravely took to the streets, the Birmingham police were waiting to arrest them, putting them in paddy wagons and school busses. Kelsey said she was arrested on the first day marching and remained in jail for four days. Although the police were mostly restrained the first day, that did not continue. Law enforcement brought out water hoses and police dogs. Television crews and newspapers filmed the young demonstrators getting arrested and hosed down by the Birmingham police, causing national outrage. More than 2,000 children were reportedly arrested during the days-long protest. "They had locked up as many people as they could possibly lock up, and they couldn't control it anymore. A civil order collapsed because there weren't enough police."  When influential white businessmen and city officials saw the business district swarming with demonstrators, in addition to President John F. Kennedy demanding a resolution and sending assistant attorney general Burke Marshall to Birmingham to facilitate negotiations, white city leaders called a meeting with King. An agreement was made to desegregate lunch counters, businesses and restrooms and improve hiring opportunities for Black people in Birmingham. The following year, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964