David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

By the end of the day, more than six
hundred children were in jail.
The next day—Friday—was
“Double-D Day.” This time fifteen
hundred schoolchildren skipped school
to come down to 16th Street Baptist. At
one o’clock, they began filing out of the
church. The streets surrounding Kelly
Ingram Park were barricaded by police
and firefighters. There was no mystery
about why the firefighters had been
called in. They had high-pressure hoses
on their fire trucks, and “water
cannons,” as they were also known, had
been a staple of crowd control since the
1930s in the early days of Nazi
Germany. Walker knew that if the