Birmingham, Alabama1963

Segregation in the South

The Civil Rights Movement

• Began in 1955 with Rosa Parks and the bus boycott

• People were instructed to avoid violence at all cost while protesting (non-violent resistance)

• When they started to desegregate the schools, African-American kids who were bused to other schools had to have police escorts to protect them.

Trying to integrate

16th Street Baptist Church

September 15, 1963

• Early Sunday morning, three Ku Klux Klan members planted 22 sticks of dynamite outside a basement window of the church. At 11 AM, when 26 children were walking into the basement, the bomb went off, killing four and injuring 22 others. The name of the sermon that day was “The Love That Forgives”.

Addie Mae Collins

• 12 years old

• Liked hopscotch, singing in the choir, pitching softballs

• Her sister was blinded in the explosion

Carole Robertson

• 14 years old

• Loved to dance

• Was a straight A student, Girl Scout, and in the Band and Science Clubs

Cynthia Wesley

• 14 years old• Cynthia and her mom

traded school rings when she was in elementary school. The ring was what identified her body when her dad was at the morgue.

Denise McNair

• 11 years old• She liked dolls, left a

mudpie in the mailbox of her childhood crush, and did a neighborhood fund-raiser for muscular dystrophy.

Those convicted-Bobby Frank Cherry

• Never has gone to trial due to mental health incompetency

Robert Chambliss

• Convicted in 1977-13 years after the bombing

• Died in prison in 1985.

Thomas Blanton, Jr.

• Convicted on July 9, 2001…38 years too late.

• His quote, “I like to go shooting. I like to go fishing. I like to go bombing.”