In March 2025, Floyd Armstrong gave Kids in Birmingham 1963 an oral history interview about growing up in Birmingham, Alabama in “a civil rights family.” As the sons of a barber who was “committed to the struggle,” Floyd and his brother Dwight, as elementary school-age children, marched in the Birmingham Children’s Crusade and were jailed for several days in May 1963. That September, the Armstrong brothers were the first Blacks to integrate an all-white school in the city of Birmingham—Graymont Elementary School. They knew the civil rights leaders personally, including Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and the NAACP lawyers who prepared them for the challenges they faced at that school. Just a few days after their historic action, on September 15, 1963, Klan members bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four young girls and sparking whites to murder two young African American boys. Floyd is certain, he says, that the violence was meant for his family, but that, “We were saved for a purpose: To tell our story.”
Floyd Armstrong
Floyd Armstrong grew up in a civil rights family in Birmingham, Alabama, the son of barber and activist James Armstrong, Sr. and Marie Norfleet Armstrong; and the youngest brother of Denise [Wrushen], James Jr., and Dwight. The children marched in the 1963 Children’s Crusade. Floyd and Dwight were the first two children to desegregate a Birmingham City School, in September 1963. In the fall of 2023, AL.com covered the Armstrong brothers’ story, in two pieces about the 60th anniversary of early attempts at school desegregation throughout Alabama—here and here.
Due to the violent atmosphere in Birmingham, their father chose to send his sons to Massachusetts to continue their education in a calmer environment. Floyd thrived academically and went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Boston College.
Floyd joined the United States Navy upon graduation and rose to the rank of Lieutenant Commander before honorably retiring in 1994. He undertook a second career with the Pre-Trial Release Program in Escambia County Florida, from which he also retired. Until his death in October 2025, Floyd Armstrong lived in Pensacola, Florida.