A turning point of the US Civil Rights movement will be recreated this week by pupils of Southampton’s Dalton E Tucker Primary School.

Students tomorrow will mark the January 15 birthday of the movement’s unofficial head: Martin Luther King, Jr.

Deputy Principal Shanda Simmons said students traditionally recreate the epochal Selma to Montgomery marches of 1965 with their own march from the school at 9am.

The hour-long march will also be commemorated with lessons on the adversities overcome in breaking down segregation.

“We really just try to explain to them that their foreparents had to struggle through hardship to get their rights,” Ms Simmons said.

“It’s so important for us to keep fresh in children’s minds what those who went before us had to endure.”

Gerald and Izola Harvey, two instrumental members of the Progressive Group that battled segregation in Bermuda in the 1950s, have also spoken at the school of their experiences.

The group staged Bermuda’s landmark Theatre Boycotts in 1959 — for which Mr Harvey had to covertly post flyers to spread the word, without revealing his identity.

As part of the commemoration, the couple addressed students at a special assembly yesterday.