TODAY IN HISTORY: 13 Black First Graders Integrate in All-White Memphis City Schools on October 3, 1961

October 3, 1961, 13 black first graders, including Dwania Kyles, Harry Williams, Sheila Malone Conway, Pamela Mayes and Alvin Freeman, integrate all-white Bruce, Gordon, Rozelle and Springdale elementary schools in Memphis, TN.

The Memphis 13 integrated all white schools in 1961

TODAY IN HISTORY: We owe much to the Memphis 13, those black first-graders in 1961, who walked into history by enrolling in all-white Memphis City Schools on October 3, 1961. It is exactly a half a century since these trailblazers were sent to all-white schools: Bruce, Gordon, Rozelle and Springdale elementary schools.

The names of the 13 are: Michael Willis (now known as Menelik Fombi), Dwania Kyles and Harry Williams, who attended Bruce Elementary; Sheila Malone Conway, Pamela Mayes, Alvin Freeman and Sharon Malone, who attended Gordon Elementary; E. C. Freeman Fentress (who died in 2010), Clarence Williams, Joyce Bell White and Leandrew Wiggins, who attended Rozelle Elementary; and Deborah Holt and Jacqueline Moore attended Springdale Elementary.

This year their place in history is being recognized in a 45-minute documentary film by University of Memphis law professor Daniel Kiel. "As a Memphian, nobody knows this story and the reverberations," he said. "It's so obvious that what we are now, who we are now as a community, can be tied back to that time and to the busing era 10 years later."

Even the NAACP, which scoured the community before the fall of 1961 to find those 13 students who would be right for the task, moved on shortly after the children started school. A Christmas party that year was the last time the first-graders had contact with the organization. Source: Commercial Appeal

Young blacks should recognize what the Memphis 13 and other foot soldiers in the civil rights movements did to make life a whole lot easier for them today. Had the Memphis 13 and other blacks during the darkest days in America's history not said enough is enough and stood up for justice and racial equality, then where would we be today?

Learn more about the Memphis 13: http://thememphis13.blogspot.com/ and http://www.facebook.com/TheMemphis13?sk=wall