On September 15, 1963, a dynamite bomb exploded , blowing apart the
16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. .Four young girls who were getting ready for Sunday School were
killed almost instantly.
This cowardly, cold, calculating event should not be forgotten that saw
Addie Mae Collins (14) Denise McNair (11), Carole Robertson (14), and
Cynthia Wesley (14) killed in an act of racially motivated terrorism, as a result of a bomb placed under the church by
members of the Ku Klux Klan. Twenty-two others, including Collins'
younger sister Sarah, were injured.Showing clearly to the world the heart of racial injustice and hatred
that today shockingly has not disapeared. In the months leading up to the bombing, Birmingham had become the
focal point of the civil rights front. The city was all too familiar
with racial violence. Both African Americans and moderate whites had
been long terrorized by the Klan. This is just one part of the
landscape of America that should not be forgotten.
The Church itself was the 16th Street Baptist Church and was designed by the State of Alabama 's only black Architect and was finished in 1911. The church was a large part of a heavily segregated in arguably one of the most racist towns in America. Birmingham had no colored Police officers of Firefighters and very few blacks could vote. The Church was very significant. The Church, besides having mass meetings of the local black community and holding various events was also a Rally point for the Civil Rights community.
Immediately after the bombing, violence surged throughout the city as
police clashed with enraged members of the Black community. Before the
day ended, at least two other African American children had been slain:
16-year-old Johnny Robinson was shot by police as he fled down an alley,
and 13-year-old Virgil Ware was shot and killed by white youths while
riding his bicycle.
In the aftermath Civil Rights activists blamed George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama,
for the killings.Only a week before the bombing Wallace had told the New York
Times that to stop the civil rights movement and the march towards
integration Alabama needed a 'few first-class funerals.'
Birmingham, a violent city, was nicknamed
'Bombingham, because it had been the scene of more than 50 bombings between
1947 and 1963. This bombing, however, would not go unnoticed. The
murderous event awakened the nation and effectively galvanized the civil
rights movement.
Years earlier, Birmingham minister Fred L. Shuttlesworth founded the
Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) to directly confront
racism and segregation in the city. In the spring of 1963,
Shuttlesworth's group joined forces with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the largest and
best known organization fighting for equal rights at the time.
Together, the men formulated a plan that called for months-long protests
to end segregation in Birmingham.
In May of that year, after weeks of marches, sit-ins, boycotts, bus
strikes, and prayer vigils, an agreement was reached. It had the input
of local government leaders, white business owners, African American
leaders and civil rights groups. The city would actively begin working
toward integration. The agreement did not sit well with segregationists,
among the most violent of which was the notorious KKK.
Civil Rights activists blamed George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama,
for the killings.Only a week before the bombing Wallace had told the New York
Times that to stop the civil rights movement and the march towards
integration Alabama needed a 'few first-class funerals.'
Though Birmingham’s white supremacists were immediately suspected in the
bombing, repeated calls for the perpetrators to be brought to justice
went unanswered for more than a decade. It was later revealed that the
FBI had information concerning the identity of the bombers by 1965 and
did nothing. In 1977, Alabama Attorney General Bob Baxley reopened the
investigation and Klan leader Robert E. Chambliss was brought to trial
for the bombings and convicted of murder. Continuing to maintain his
innocence, Chambliss died in prison in 1985. The case was again reopened
in 1980, 1988 and 1997, when two other former Klan members, Thomas
Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry, were finally brought to trial; Blanton
was convicted in 2001 and Cherry in 2002. A fourth suspect, Herman Frank
Cash, died in 1994 before he could be brought to trial. To this day,
the perpetrators of the bombing still remain a mystery
The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing is cited by many historians as
the turning point in the civil rights movement. An editorial in the
Milwaukee Sentinel said the bombing should “ continue to serve to goad the
conscience” of the country. “The deaths...in a sense are on the hands of
each of us.”
We should always keep in mind that the four girls who died, while
immortalized in history, were children with children's dreams. Carol
Robertson was a straight A student who loved to dance. Cynthia Wesley
excelled in math. Addie Mae Collins was quiet, athletic, and had a flare
for art. Denise McNair wrote plays for the kids in her neighborhood.
History is not scripted. In the case of the 16th Street Baptist
Church bombing it was shaped out of racist hatred that ended the lives
of four young girls.
Services for Victim of Birmingham Church Bombing
The following Alabama was written by John Coltrane in response to the racially-driven
bombings which took place in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. It features a melancholy melody, a much slower tempo than many of
Coltrane’s songs, and a hauntingly sorrowful tone from Coltrane’s
saxophone. These aspects not only capture the tragedy and sorrow of the
Birmingham event, but of the human injustice that ignited the civil
rights movement.
“Alabama,” among other politically motivated songs, remains known as an
anthem of a kind for the Civil Rights Movement. Not an anthem that was
sung during protests or at speeches by Civil Rights leaders, but that
was heard on the radio and sparked a remembrance for the four girls who
lost their lives in Birmingham in 1963. The piece was released on the album Live In Birdland in 1964.
It is said that Coltrane was motivated by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s
eulogy for the girls In his eulogy, King stated, “These children, unoffending, innocent and
beautiful, were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes
ever perpetrated against humanity…They did not die in vain. God still
has a way of bringing good out of evil.”
This video, featuring King’s eulogy, also shows
clips from the aftermath of the Charleston church shooting from 2015,
which has evocative parallels to the 1963 Birmingham bombing. We must remember and continue to stand against racial injustice wherever it occurs.:
