WVTM/The Birmingham Times
On Sunday, family and church attendees remembered the little girls lost on Sept. 15, 1963, at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham 61 years ago.
The church held a commemoration service as those in attendance recalled the loss of 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and 11-year-old Denise McNair, who were killed that morning.
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Kimberly McNair Brock, sister of Denise McNair, was there at the church service.
“A lot of my family went to this church, so it brings back a lot of memories,” said Brock.
After many years of investigations and legal proceedings, three men were found guilty in the bombing.
Members of the Ku Klux Klan planted a bomb inside the church that killed the four young girls. Collins’ younger sister, Sarah, was blinded by the blast, which also injured 22 others.
That same day, police shot and killed 16-year-old Johnny Robinson after a group of kids reportedly threw rocks. Virgil Ware, 13, was shot to death while riding on the handlebars of his brother’s bicycle. (The teens who killed him got no jail time.)
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. sent a telegram to President Lyndon B. Johnson, “Dear Mr. President, I shudder to think what our nation has become when Sunday school children … are killed in church by racist bombs.”
Days later, he told a crowd of 8,000 at the girls’ funeral service, “The innocent blood of these little girls may well serve as the redemptive force that will bring new light to the city.”
The bombing became a turning point in generating broader sympathy for the Civil Rights movement.
