40 years after Birmingham protests
More Black children in extreme poverty
By Monica Moorehead
Who could forget the horrific images of white
firefighters aiming their water hoses at African American
youths who were trying to protect themselves from the torturous
blasts of water? Or racist police, at the behest of the
notorious public safety commissioner "Bull" Connor, urging
their vicious dogs to tear at the flesh of these youths?
It was a scene that would forever change the political
landscape of the civil-rights movement.
The place was Birmingham, Ala., once considered the most
segregated city in the United States. The year was 1963. On May
3, thousands of African American students, from elementary to
high school age, walked out of their classes all over the city
to protest racist Jim Crow laws.
Much of the organizing for these demonstrations came out of
the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Just four months later
this same church would be the scene of a terrible bombing by
the KKK, resulting in the murders of four Black girls.
Child activists, supported by their parents, were arrested
in massive numbers for organizing marches and civil
disobedience. As their bodies filled the jails, they kept their
spirits high by singing civil-rights songs.
This year, on May 3-4, more than 2,000 participants in those
protests, now in their 50s and 60s, came together with former
civil-rights leaders in the city once referred to as Bombingham
to commemorate these significant protests that are credited for
helping to force the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The progressive gains coming out of the civil-rights
movement helped win political and economic concessions for a
significant sector of Black people battling conditions of
semi-slavery.
Forty years later, have fundamental conditions gotten better
or worse for Black people--especially the young?
The 2000 Census Bureau statistics for Birmingham show that
there has been a severe decline in living standards.
Black people compose more than 73 percent of the general
population in the steel capital of the South. The per-capita
income is about $16,000.
Close to 25 percent of the population and 21 percent of
families live below the official poverty line.
Of those living in poverty, more than 35 percent are under
the age of 18.
Deepening emergency crisis for Black children
The Birmingham statistics are just the tip of the iceberg.
On April 30, the Children's Defense Fund released very alarming
figures.
They indicate that in 2001, almost 1 million Black children
were living in "extreme poverty"--meaning below half the
poverty line.
Extreme poverty refers to after-tax income, including the
value of food stamps, subsidized lunches and housing benefits.
Half the poverty line in 2001 was $7,064 annually for a family
of three.
The most devastating federal policy affecting the rise of
extreme poverty was and continues to be the 1996 "Welfare
Reform" Act, which eliminated federal funding for Aid to
Families with Dependent Children. AFDC once guaranteed Medicaid
health benefits for poor children. All this occurred under
Democratic President Bill Clinton.
"The story of deepening poverty is central to the story of
Black children in poverty in the wake of the 1996 welfare law:
without it, the story is incomplete," the report stresses.
"That is because more than eight in 10 Black children on AFDC
were already poor in 1995, the year before the law was signed.
Therefore, any deterioration in the economic circumstances of
most Black children on welfare can only be measured by looking
at the deepening or lessening of the severity of poverty for
these already-poor children--not by changes in official poverty
rates."
This is the highest level since these annual data were first
collected in 1979. It marks an increase of 50 percent from the
number in 1999, based on the 2000 Census Bureau figures.
The fact that African Americans compose about 13 percent of
the U.S. population highlights that 1 million Black children in
extreme poverty is hugely disproportionate. In fact, more than
8 percent of Black children lived in poverty in 2001--double
the percentage for all other nationalities, according to the
study.
To characterize the current Bush administration's attitude
toward the poor as callous is much too generous. Bush's
attitude is both racist and hostile.
He now wants to eliminate any federal spending for Head
Start, a pre-kindergarten program for poor children. At the
same time he is pushing for gigantic tax cuts to benefit the
rich.
Black children are not the only children languishing in
extreme poverty. In 2001, there were over 700,000 Latino
children living in extreme poverty, an increase of 13 percent
from 2000. There was also a 2 percent increase in very poor
white children, who now number 2 million.
It is no wonder that with the deteriorating social status of
poor children, especially those of color, the United States has
the highest infant mortality rate and largest prison population
of any industrialized country.
Despite all the racist repression they faced--police beat
ings, dogs and fire hoses--the heroic mass resistance of the
Black children of Birmingham who helped overturn Jim Crow laws
showed how real change can be brought about.
The time is more than ripe to organize nationwide protests
in Washington, D.C., to demand money for human needs, not war
abroad. And once again poor and working-class youths must lead
the way.
Reprinted from the May 15, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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