Manoa School's connection to the Civil Rights Bill

I had been hearing a lot about a man named John Lewis recently. Time for Kids had an article that said he was a congressman for the state of Georgia and a civil rights leader. Civil rights protects people from being treated unfairly or discriminated. He passed away on July 17. He was 80 years old.

He helped organize the March on Washington in 1963 where Martin Luther King, Jr. made his "I have a dream" speech. He also led a famous march in 1965 from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to demonstrate that African-American citizens wanted their right to vote.

When we were looking up more information about the Civil Rights movement, we found an article about Manoa School students in 1963. The article said that 64 students from Manoa Elementary School signed a petition that asked the Senate to pass the Civil Right Bill. Hawaii's Senator Hiram Fong presented the petition to the Senate. The following is part of what was written in the petition.

“We are 64, 9- to 11-year-olds from Manoa Elementary School in Honolulu, Hawaii. In this nice school of ours we have all kinds of faces.

There are Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, Irish, Korean, Norwegian-German, Scottish-Irish, French-Japanese, and Hawaiian-Chinese faces. Religiously we represent Episcopalians, Buddhists, Friends, Baptists, Methodists. Protestants and Catholics. We have fun learning and living together. (We have disagreements too.) We would miss the different races and religions if they were gone. Today we play together, tomorrow we earn together.” We found the whole thing that the students wrote on Google.

I guess even kids from Manoa School can make a difference.