The
4 girls killed during the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.
Clockwise from top left: Addie Mae Collins (aged 14), Cynthia Wesley
(aged 14), Carole Robertson (aged 14) and Denise McNair (aged 11)
The
16th Street Baptist Church bombing was a
white supremacist terrorist bombing of the
16th Street Baptist Church in
Birmingham, Alabama, on Sunday, September 15, 1963. Four members of a local
Ku Klux Klan chapter planted 19 sticks of
dynamite attached to a
timing device beneath the steps located on the east side of the church.
Described by
Martin Luther King Jr.
as "one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against
humanity", the explosion at the church killed four girls and injured
between 14 and 22 other people.
In
a revival of effort by states and the federal government to prosecute
cold cases from the civil rights era, the state conducted trials in the
early 21st century of Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. and Bobby Cherry, who
were each convicted of four counts of murder and sentenced to
life imprisonment in 2001 and 2002, respectively. Future
United States Senator Doug Jones
successfully prosecuted Blanton and Cherry. Herman Cash had died in
1994, and was never charged with his alleged involvement in the bombing.
(...)
In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, four members of the
United Klans of America—Thomas
Edwin Blanton Jr., Herman Frank Cash, Robert Edward Chambliss, and
Bobby Frank Cherry—planted a minimum of 15 sticks of dynamite with a
time delay under the steps of the church, close to the basement. At
approximately 10:22 a.m., an anonymous man phoned the 16th Street
Baptist Church. The call was answered by the acting
Sunday School secretary: a 14-year-old girl named Carolyn Maull. To Maull, the anonymous caller simply said the words, "Three minutes",
before terminating the call. Less than one minute later, the bomb
exploded as five children were present within the basement restroom,
close to the stairwell, changing into their choir robes in preparation
for a
sermon
entitled "A Love That Forgives". According to one survivor, the
explosion shook the entire building and propelled the girls' bodies
through the air "like rag dolls".
The explosion blew a hole measuring seven feet (2.1 m) in diameter in the church's rear wall, and a
crater
five feet (1.5 m) wide and two feet (0.61 m) deep in the ladies'
basement lounge, destroying the rear steps to the church and blowing a
passing motorist out of his car. Several other cars parked near the
site of the blast were destroyed, and windows of properties located
more than two blocks from the church were also damaged. All but one of
the church's stained-glass windows were destroyed in the explosion. The
sole stained-glass window largely undamaged in the explosion depicted
Christ leading a group of young children.
Hundreds
of individuals, some of them lightly wounded, converged on the church
to search the debris for survivors as police erected barricades around
the church and several outraged men scuffled with police. An estimated
2,000 black people converged on the scene in the hours following the
explosion. The church's
pastor, the
Reverend John Cross Jr., attempted to placate the crowd by loudly reciting the
23rd Psalm through a
bullhorn.
One individual who went to the scene to help search for survivors,
Charles Vann, later recollected that he had observed a solitary white
man whom he recognized as Robert Edward Chambliss (a known member of the
Ku Klux Klan) standing alone and motionless at a barricade. According
to Vann's later testimony, Chambliss was standing "looking down toward
the church, like a firebug watching his fire".
Four
girls, Addie Mae Collins (age 14, born April 18, 1949); Carol Denise
McNair (age 11, born November 17, 1951); Carole Rosanond Robertson (age
14, born April 24, 1949); and Cynthia Dionne Wesley (age 14, born
April 30, 1949), were killed in the attack. The explosion was so intense
that one of the girls' bodies was
decapitated
and so badly mutilated that her body could be identified only through
her clothing and a ring. Another victim was killed by a piece of
mortar
embedded in her skull. The pastor of the church, the Reverend John
Cross, recollected in 2001 that the girls' bodies were found "stacked
on top of each other, clung together". All four girls were pronounced
dead on arrival at the
Hillman Emergency Clinic.
Between
14 and 22 additional people were injured in the explosion, one of whom
was Addie Mae's younger sister, 12-year-old Sarah Collins. She had 21
pieces of glass embedded in her face and was blinded in one eye. In her
later recollections of the bombing, Collins would recall that in the
moments immediately before the explosion, she had watched her sister,
Addie, tying her
dress sash.
Another sister of Addie Mae Collins, 16-year-old Junie Collins, would
later recall that shortly before the explosion, she had been sitting in
the basement of the church reading the
Bible
and had observed Addie Mae Collins tying the dress sash of Carol
Denise McNair before she returned upstairs to the ground floor of the
church.
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