16Th Street Church Bombing

September 15, 1963 Birmingham, Alabama 16th Street Church B o m b i n g Cynthia Wesley was 14 years old and Addie Mae Collins the adopted daughter was 14 years old at of two teachers. She the time of the enjoyed reading and bombing. She was math and played in the 7th of 8 children the band at her high and enjoyed playing school. softball. Denise McNair was 11 years old Carole Robertson when she died. As was 14 years old at an elementary the time of her student, Condolezza death. She was a Rice was one of her straight A student friends. who enjoyed science. In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, Bobby Frank Cherry, Thomas Blanton, Herman Frank Cash, and Robert ‘Dynamite Bob’ Chambliss, members of a Ku Klux Klan group, planted a box of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the church, near the basement. 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. Four girls, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, were killed in the attack, and 22 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. Civil rights supporters blamed George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama, for the killings. Birmingham was a violent city and was nicknamed “Bombingham,” because the city had experienced dozens of bombings in black neighborhoods and businesses. In fact, just one week before the bombing, Governor Wallace had told The New York Times that to stop integration, Alabama needed a "few ﬁrst- class funerals." 16th Street Baptist Church 1 BOMBINGHAM Precisely because of its reputation as a stronghold for white supremacy, civil rights activists made Birmingham a major focus of their efforts to desegregate the Deep South. In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. had been arrested there while leading supporters of his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in a nonviolent campaign of demonstrations against segregation. While in jail, King wrote a letter to local white ministers justifying his decision not to call off the demonstrations in the face of continued bloodshed at the hands of local law enforcement ofﬁcials. His famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” was published in the national press, along with shocking images of police brutality against protesters in Birmingham that helped build widespread support for the civil rights cause. 2 Forensics - Burks BOMBINGHAM The Civil Rights Movement’s result, in what would be called the goal in Birmingham was to Children's Crusade, more than desegregate the city’s one thousand students skipped downtown merchants. The school on May 2 to meet at the movement's efforts were helped 16th Street Baptist Church to by the brutal response of local join the demonstrations. More authorities, in than six hundred particular Eugene marched out of the "Bull" Connor, the church fifty at a time Commissioner of in an attempt to walk Public Safety. He to City Hall to speak had long held to Birmingham's forcefully in negotiations between much political mayor about the white business community power, but had segregation. They and the SCLC. On May 10, the lost a recent were arrested and parties announced an agreement election for mayor to a less put into jail. to desegregate the lunch rabidly segregationist candidate. counters and other public Refusing to accept the new accommodations downtown, to mayor's authority, Connor create a committee to eliminate intended to stay in office. discriminatory hiring practices, to The SCLC used a variety of arrange for the release of jailed nonviolent methods of protesters, and to establish confrontation, including sit-ins, regular means of communication kneel-ins at local churches, and a between black and white leaders. march to the county courthouse Following the negotiations, many to mark the beginning of a drive In this first encounter the police white communities reacted with to register voters. City officials, acted with restraint. On the next violence. A local motel which however, obtained an injunction day, Bull Connor became housed leaders of the SCLC was barring all such protests. incensed when the protestors did bombed, as well as the home of Convinced that the order was not heed his warnings. Connor King’s brother. Then on unconstitutional, the protestors ordered the use of police dogs September 15th, of that same defied it and prepared for mass on the children and then turned year, the 16th Street Church was arrests of its supporters. King the city's fire hoses and water bombed. elected to be among those cannons on the students. arrested on April 12, 1963. The National television networks campaign, however, faltered as it broadcast the scenes of the dogs ran out of demonstrators willing attacking demonstrators and the to risk arrest. The SCLC then water from the fire hoses came up with a bold and knocking down the controversial alternative: to train schoolchildren. Widespread high school students to take part public outrage led the Kennedy in the demonstrations. As a administration to intervene more Infamous Cases 3 16TH STREET BAPTIST CHURCH Many of the the time of the explosion, lost her right eye, and more civil rights than 20 other people were injured in the blast. protest marches that took place in The explosion at the church was the third bombing in Birmingham 11 days, after a federal court order had come down during the mandating the integration of Alabama’s school 1960s began system. In the aftermath of the bombing, thousands at the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church, which of angry black protesters gathered at the scene at had long been a significant religious center for the the church. When Governor Wallace sent police and city’s black population and a routine meeting place state troopers to stop the protests, violence broke out for civil rights organizers like King. KKK members across the city; a number of protesters were arrested, and two young African American men were had routinely called in bomb threats intended to killed before the National Guard was called in to disrupt civil rights meetings as well as services at the restore order. church. King later spoke before 8,000 people At 10:22 a.m. on that fateful morning, some 200 at the funeral church members were in the building–many for three of the girls. attending Sunday school classes before the start of the 11 am service–when the bomb detonated on the church’s east side, spraying mortar and bricks from Kelly Ingram Park, Birmingham the front of the church and caving in its interior walls. Most parishioners were able to evacuate the building as it filled with smoke, but the bodies of four young girls were found beneath the rubble in a basement Though Birmingham’s white supremacists were restroom. Ten-year-old Sarah Collins (the sister of immediately suspected in the bombing, repeated Addie Mae Collins), who was also in the restroom at calls for the perpetrators to be brought to justice went unanswered for years. It was later revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (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. 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; both were convicted. A fourth suspect, Herman Frank Cash, died in 1994 before he could be brought to trial. Kelly Ingram Park, Birmingham 4 Infamous Cases.

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