Janice Kelsey grew up in Birmingham, Alabama at the height of segregation, attending an all-black school and church. Kelsey grew to understand the inequities between her school and the nearby white schools and decided to march in the Children’s Crusade in 1963. She went on to get a Masters and Educational Specialist Degrees in Counseling from the University of Alabama. After years as a teacher, counselor and principal, she retired from the Birmingham Board of Education. She is now an independent educational consultant, working with the African American Studies program at UAB, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, and United Way of Central Alabama.

In 1963, 16-year-old Janice Wesley made a decision that had a profound effect on her future. She decided to risk it all and go to jail by becoming a foot soldier in the Birmingham, Alabama Children’s Crusade to protest the racial segregation that prevailed in her city and throughout the South. She tells the story of her arrest in I Woke Up with My Mind on Freedom and goes on to describe her role in the new South as an educator and administrator.