September 15: Anniversary of the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
On Sunday, September 15, 1963, I was most likely in Sunday School and worship at St. John’s United Methodist Church in Davenport, IA. About one Sunday each month, I was in the children’s choir that sang during the worship services. I don’t remember if we were singing that week, but I do remember that Sunday mornings were important for my family. During Sunday School and worship, our congregation emphasized social justice and equality. Our public schools were desegregated, but I do not remember any children or adults of color who were active in our church. They were more likely to be members of the Third Baptist Church.
In the past (about the 1930s and 1940s), there was a lot of prejudice in Davenport, and there was a time when the Ku Klux Klan was very active and it only took a little bit to start trouble. For example, there were two ice cream parlors, right down on Harrison Street, on 12th and Harrison. In one ice cream parlor,, African Americans could get ice cream “to go.” The other one did not allow black people to step a foot in the premises. I remember one of my white school friends saying to me,”Those black kids are sure cute…when they’re little.” But my mother invited black friends to our house. And I remember that she encouraged me to be in a fashion show with some of my school friends at the Third Baptist Church. That was amazing… I was the only white girl in the fashion show!
Meanwhile, while I was growing up in Davenport, IA, children in the south were having different life experiences. Although Birmingham city leaders had started to integrate public places, not everyone agreed with ending segregation. Bombings and other acts of violence followed the settlement, and the 16th Street Baptist Church had become a target. The three-story church had been a rallying point for civil rights activities through the spring of 1963. The church was the place for training students for the 1963 Birmingham Civil Rights Children’s Crusade. The church was used as a meeting-place for civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph David Abernathy and Fred Shuttlesworth.
The 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed on Sunday, September 15, 1963 in an act of racially-motivated terrorism. In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, Bobby Frank Cherry, Thomas Blanton, Herman Frank Cash, and Robert Chambliss, members of United Klans of America, a Ku Klux Klan group, planted a box of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the church, near the basement. The four little girls were getting ready for youth choir at the church on a Sunday morning.
At about 10:22 a.m., twenty-six children were walking into the basement assembly room to prepare for the sermon entitled “The Love That Forgives,” when the bomb exploded. Hate-filled white people set off the bomb, and those four little girls died because they were African American in church on a Sunday. The bombing killed Addie Mae Collins (age 14), Denise McNair (age 11), Carole Robertson (age 14), and Cynthia Wesley (age 14). Twenty-two additional people were injured, one of whom was Addie Mae Collins’ younger sister, Sarah. The explosion blew a hole in the church’s rear wall, destroyed the back steps and all but one stained-glass window, which showed Christ leading a group of little children.
The explosion marked a turning point in the U.S. 1960s Civil Rights Movement and contributed to support for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.