South Korean students win with our interviews on the Children’s Crusade

Two students in South Korea parlayed their interviews with KIDS Storytellers into a winning project for National History Day, earning themselves a place in the June 2025 National Competition at the University of Maryland. Liwen Wang and Oliver Park chose to research Birmingham’s 1963 Children’s Crusade and found Kids in Birmingham 1963 online. They wrote: “We would love the opportunity to interview a storyteller and gain deeper insights into the significance of the Children’s Crusade.” We set them up with an interview with Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, a recently-retired university president who told them about how, at age 12, he marched and spent several days in jail. (Read Freeman Hrabowski’s story here.)

For their final project, the students asked for additional interviews to expand their perspective. Author TK Thorne, a former Birmingham police officer, and Annetta Nunn, retired chief of police in Birmingham, offered interviews.

Wang and Park are students at Daegu International School, in Daegu, South Korea.