Sixty years ago, on September 15, 1963, four little girls were changing into choir robes and chatting in a church restroom as they prepared for the Youth Sunday services being held that morning at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
Instead, at 10:22 a.m., a bundle of dynamite that white supremacists had hidden under the church steps exploded. The bomb was attached to a timer that had been deliberately set to go off during worship services. Fourteen-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, and 11-year-old Denise McNair were all killed.
Carole was a straight-A student, a member of the science club and the Girl Scouts, and played clarinet in the school band.
Cynthia played clarinet too, along with piano, and dreamed of being a teacher.
Denise, the youngest, was excited about singing in the youth chorus; future Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a childhood friend, remembered that they performed in musical skits and played dolls together.
Addie was one of seven siblings and loved softball and drawing. Her 12-year-old sister Sarah was with her in the church restroom and remembered that Denise had just asked Addie to help her tie the sash on the back of her dress when the bomb went off.
Two more Black teenagers were killed in the racial violence that swept through Birmingham–in the hours after the bombings: 16-year-old Johnny Robinson was shot and killed by a police officer, and 13-year-old Virgil Ware was shot and killed by a white teenager carrying a Confederate flag. Addie’s sister Sarah, now Sarah Collins Rudolph, lost her right eye following the explosion and was among the child survivors at the church who lived with the trauma of the day for decades. Their older sister Junie remembered that she and Addie had gotten into an argument that morning because she’d lost one of Addie’s rings, and the next time she saw Addie was when she was asked to identify her sister in the morgue. Her face was so unrecognizable Junie only knew her by a single shoe. Barbara Cross, whose father was the church’s pastor, was hit in the head with ,…
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