The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing

On Sunday morning, September fifteenth, nineteen sixty-three, a bomb planted beneath the exterior steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church exploded at ten twenty-two. Four girls died in the basement where they had gathered for Sunday school: Addie Mae Collins, fourteen. Cynthia Wesley, fourteen. Carole Robertson, fourteen. And Denise McNair, eleven.

The church had been the organizing center of the Birmingham civil rights campaign. For months that spring and summer, its basement had served as a staging ground for marchers, and its sanctuary as a meeting hall for thousands of people each week. The campaign had achieved a settlement in May requiring downtown businesses to desegregate. The September bombing was the Ku Klux Klan's answer.

The FBI investigated and identified suspects within months. Then the investigation was effectively suspended. The case was closed. It would not be reopened for fourteen years. Robert Chambliss, one of four Klansmen who placed the bomb, was finally convicted of murder in nineteen seventy-seven, after a state-level prosecution led by Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley, who had been a young law student when the bomb went off and had made the case a personal priority when he took office. Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry were convicted in two thousand one and two thousand two respectively. A fourth suspect, Herman Frank Cash, died before he was charged.

The church was rebuilt and remains an active congregation. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in two thousand six. The four girls are remembered by name every September fifteenth. Their deaths and the delayed accountability for those deaths are part of a longer reckoning that American law enforcement has conducted, incompletely, with the violence of that era.