Janice Kelsey: A Foot Soldier in the Civil Rights Movement

In 1963, Janice Kelsey was 15 years old when she and her fellow students protested segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. Janice and scores of other students were arrested and eventually the nation saw them being attacked by police dogs and blasted with water hoses. Janice wrote a book about that experience and how it shaped her life from that point on. She joins John today to talk about her book I Woke Up With My MInd On Freedom and her career as an educator.

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In 1963, 16-year-old Janice Wesley made a decision that had a profound affect on her future. She decided to risk it all and go to jail by becoming a foot soldier in the Birmingham, Alabama Children’s Crusade to protest the racial segregation that prevailed in her city and throughout the South. Janice tells the story of her arrest in I Woke Up with My Mind on Freedom, and goes on to describe her role in the new South as an educator and administrator. Today, she travels the United States, speaking about the horrors of living in the old South while describing how she and other youth made a difference and changed their world.