There’s no shortage of films about the historic Selma to Montgomery March during the height of the civil rights movement.

Director Ava Duvernay’s epic 2014 drama is filled with gripping performances, as is the 1999 movie Selma, Lord, Selma, which depicted the horrors of “Bloody Sunday.”

A generation ago, Eyes on the Prize chronicled the heroic journey of marchers who stared down racist state troopers.

Some 55 years later, filmmakers still recreate the 54 mile route from Selma to Alabama’s state capitol of Montgomery, but one marcher says most movies miss a critical point.

“None of them focused on the children,” said 69-year-old Lynda Blackmon Lowery. “The Selma Movement was a children’s movement.”

She would know. Lowery was just a kid when she heard Dr. King speak at a local church in Selma.

The brave young girl signed up with lots of other children to participate in three non-violent marches along U.S. Route 80 in March of 1965. She was 14-and-a-half years old, and tells the story in her book, Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom.

Young Lynda was on the Edmund Pettus Bridge when state troopers attacked demonstrators as they knelt in prayer.

“I heard the word 'n----r' twice,” Lynda recalled. “I rolled over and started running into a cloud of tear gas … I ended up with seven stitches over my right eye and 28 on the back of my head.”

Lynda Blackmon Lowery’s experience is now a musical, “Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom.” It kicks off its 2020 nationwide tour at Riverside Church in Manhattan.

“I’m proud to say I went to jail nine times and you’re looking at a happy and proud jail bird because I didn’t go to jail for hurting anybody,” Lynda said. “I went to jail for what I believed in.”

During our taping for this segment for television, a surprise reunion occurred with Martin Luther King III—the keeper of his father’s legacy.

“At 12 or 10 years old, I’m not sure that I’ve would’ve been able to do that,” King said of Lynda’s willingness to put her life on the line during protests. “They seemed to not allow society to define and determine – I don’t know if they thought about it … and it transformed this nation.”

Lynda Blackmon Lowery still remembers the freedom songs that she and other children sang as they marched for miles on end in the spring of 1965. That route is now a U.S. National Historic Trail.

On March 22, the fiery activist celebrates her 70th birthday.