Ordinary people enabled the Civil Rights movement to make inroads at the local level.  By placing ordinary people (willingly) in harm’s way, the movement’s leaders forced the federal government to act in order to protect its citizens, which brought intense scrutiny to bear on segregation.  Groups such as the SNCC wanted nothing less than complete freedom for African-Americans.  “Hence, they concentrated on working with local Blacks to organize their own communities for freedom” (Lawson and Payne, 19). Children made school segregation a focal point of the movement, risking their lives by simply walking into schools in Little Rock, Birmingham and elsewhere in the South.  Their importance in protest actions became more important as arrest and attrition took its toll on activists.  “When the number of adults available for protests dwindled, King recruited children, some as young as six years old, whose tender age did not keep them from getting assaulted and arrested” (Lawson and Payne, 27).

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