Lessons from Birmingham: 60 years after the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

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This city is remembering a dark chapters in U.S. civil rights history. On September 15, 1963 the Ku Klux Klan bombed a church, killing four Black girls and rocking the conscience of the nation.

A state trooper and two plainclothes men stand guard at a roadblock at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., a day after the bombing on Sept. 16, 1963.A state trooper and two plainclothes men stand guard at a roadblock at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., a day after the bombing on Sept. 16, 1963."There was no memorial," she says."I thought I would see their names on the doors or something. And there was nothing.

McKinstry believes no one talked about it out of fear and futility, knowing that racial crimes were left unsolved. There was a bombing across from her home months after the church was hit, which only added to her trauma, something she struggled with for decades. "I was 15 when the bomb exploded, but I would remain 15 years old for the next 20 years," she says."I was really stuck in that place, primarily because I never saw anyone arrested or taken to justice for this."Lynsey Weatherspoon for NPRThe Four Spirits statue honors the four girls who were killed at the 16th Street Baptist Church.were responsible for the bombing. But the first prosecution didn't come until 1977. Then two more in the early 2000s.

"It was an unsolved murder in which there were four families that were destroyed, and those families never had had the full measure of justice," says, who was the U.S. Attorney in Alabama who re-opened and prosecuted the case nearly 40 years later. "I don't think I recognized it as much at the time, but over time, it has become so important for people to reflect on where we were as a country," he says."Where we were as a people, and how divided we were under Jim Crow laws and how horrific those were. And how political leaders can sometimes stoke violence."Sen.

 

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