By Noreen Kompanik
It was a Sunday morning on September 15, 1963. Four lovely African-American girls were happily tying the sashes of their choir robes in the basement lounge in Birmingham, Alabama’s 16th Street Baptist Church. 200 other church members dressed in their finest were attending Sunday School.
And then it all went dark.
A powerful homemade bomb planted under the church stairs sprayed mortar and bricks from the front of the church and caved in its interior walls. The blast was heard from miles away.
14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, and 11-year-old Denise McNair died instantly, found buried beneath the rubble. Within hours of the explosion, two young black teens were shot in separate racially-motivated incidents. 22 people were injured in the church blast and the riots that followed. Some were hospitalized for months, and 10-year old, Sarah Collins lost her right eye in the explosion.
This shocking act of domestic terrorism created public outrage over the events in Birmingham. How could this happen to children? In a church, no less.
But to comprehend the anger and fear that lead to these horrific acts, we need to understand the history of racism in America, and how it affected Birmingham.
Though the U.S. Military was on the verge of ramping up in the Vietnam Conflict, another war was under way in Birmingham. Here in the heart of the racially segregated South, a battle was taking place for the nation’s soul.
Nowhere is the story told more poignantly than at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, a cultural and educational research center established in January, 2017, and Smithsonian affiliate. This amazing tribute to the fight for racial equality details the history of events in the South eventually leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Movies, daunting exhibits, and photo displays paint the picture of the hard-fought, often dangerous struggle for African American Civil Rights, by both blacks and whites who firmly believed in the cause.
The tour begins with a short documentary, followed by a simple eye-opening display of two drinking fountains. One for the “Colored.” One for the “White.” This was a city consisting of two worlds, and while its citizens may have worked side by side, unequal opportunity was evident in virtually every other aspect of life.
Birmingham’s “Jim Crow” laws segregated theaters, ballparks, public transportation, lunch counters, public restrooms, and classrooms. It dictated where people played, stayed, shopped, and yes, lived.
1953 replicas of both black and white classrooms display the profound differences between the two learning environments, clearly the white classroom with better desks, blackboard, and even a movie projector. The black classroom minimally stark at best.
Signs in city buses made it clear where riders could sit. But on a memorable day in late 1955, a quiet courageous woman named Rosa Parks refused to give her seat to white man on a crowded Montgomery city bus. Though she was arrested, many feel her bravery opened doors to the power of the people in the advent of the Civil Rights movement. As a stronghold of segregation, enforced by law, custom, and violence, Birmingham was about to see a change.
In 1956, Dr. Fred Shuttlesworth, Birmingham minister and civil rights figure led a bus boycott in which the black community refused to ride city buses for two years. He had also formed the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, and established its headquarters at his Bethel Baptist Church.
Despite severe beatings at the hands of mobs, and the bombing of his home, Shuttlesworth prevailed. But the violence continued, and escalated. With 50 racially-motived bombings of local African-American churches, homes, and businesses, the city earned the nickname “Bombingham.”
In 1963, Shuttlesworth invited Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Reverend Ralph David Abernathy to Birmingham. The group agreed that the combination of the strength of the city’s local civil rights movement and refusal of Birmingham’s power structure to yield to any form of desegregation provided the perfect environment and time for a campaign to capture national attention. The gauntlet was thrown down and America’s most racially discriminatory and segregated city was about to explode in even more violence. In the words of Dr. King, “As Birmingham goes, so goes the South.”
Change wasn’t easy. The more the Civil Rights movement pushed for equality, the more the powers to be pushed against any type of change. Racial equality was not in their vocabulary.
Alabama Governor George Wallace was a strong leading foe of desegregation. Birmingham had one of the South’s strongest and most violent chapters of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). And the city’s public safety commissioner, Eugene “Bull” Connor was notorious for his willingness to use brutality in an effort to suppress “radical demonstrators,” union members, and blacks.
In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King was arrested while leading a nonviolent campaign of demonstrations against racial segregation. His famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” along with shocking images of police brutality against protestors achieved national media attention.
On May 2, 1963, police began arresting young teenagers peacefully marching in Kelly Ingram Park. “Bull” Connor was ready with a plan. When the non-violent protestors refused to disperse, he ordered police to release German Shepherd attack dogs. Firemen directed high pressure fire-hoses knocking protestors to the ground and tearing at their clothing. The world was aghast.
Protestors were released, however as some city administrators feared more civil unrest. But sit–ins continued at lunch counters, and under pressure Birmingham businesses began hiring more African Americans. Though some progress was achieved, it was a mere pebble in a large pond of hatred.
Governor George Wallace violating a court order, directed the National Guard Troops to prevent desegregation in Alabama public schools. But President John F. Kennedy answered by ordering the troops to withdraw, allowing desegregation to happen.
In response, angry members of the Ku Klux Klan chose to make a powerful statement planting the bomb at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. But this tragic event sparked public outrage and created national political pressure that helped ensure passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This historic legislation was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, 1964.
Thankfully, it’s places like the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and National Monument, part of the National Park System, where visitors can dramatically see, feel, and hear the true accounts of the Civil Rights movement in Birmingham and other cities throughout the South.
Though the legal system was slow to provide justice, the church bombing case was eventually re-opened and all still-living Klan members involved were convicted. These demons had names. KKK members Robert Chambliss, Thomas Blanton, and Bobby Frank Cherry were sentenced to life. A fourth suspect, Herman Frank Cash died before he could be brought to trial.
Over the years, lawsuit after lawsuit, challenge after challenge, and refusal to enforce laws in place has continued to fire the flames of racial injustice, hatred, and violence. “There but for the grace of God, go I” is a proverbial saying that holds so much meaning for me and many others, as does “walk a mile in my shoes.”
As we headed to the outdoor park monument across the street from the institute, a steel and bronze sculpture known as “The Four Spirits” caught my eye. Dedicated to the four little girls who died in the bombing, the magnificent life-size sculptures also include six heaven-bound doves carrying the souls of the four girls and two boys who died that day in racial violence.
The poses of the sculpture are meant to capture the final moments of the girls’ lives just before the bomb went off. I had to touch each of their beautiful faces. One held a book containing the poetic words from William Butler Yeats “Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild, with a faery, hand in hand. For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”
I wept. But as I walked away, a part of me couldn’t help but believe that these four beautiful innocents did not die in vain. For it’s ironic that the bombing’s impact was exactly the opposite of what its perpetrators had intended. It did not make the afflicted cower. It awoke an entire nation to action.
It’s interesting that somehow… love always prevails.
If you Go:
Birmingham Civil Rights Institute is located in downtown Birmingham. Advanced online timed ticketing is required prior to visiting and can be booked on the website. Keep in mind that currently, the institute is only open Thursday through Saturday from 10 am to 3 pm.
Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
520 16th Street North, Birmingham, Alabama
1-866-328-9696 or bcri@bcri.org
Website: https://www.bcri.org/visit-us/
All photos by Noreen Kompanik
1 comment
This is a remarkable story. Thank you.
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