Bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church

 

We had been trying to win the hearts of white Southerners, and that was a mistake, a misjudgement. We realized that you have to hit them in the pocket.

Wyatt Tee Walker

 

Birmingham, Alabama, was one of the most segregated cities in the United States in the 1960s, and it was also the place where a violent branch of the Ku Klux Klan lived. Since the end of World War II, the city had seen a lot of prejudice against its black community. An event that took place on Sunday, September 16, 1963, proved to be a turning point in the civil rights movement at that time, and it put an end to segregation in the south.

The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was a three-storey building and the largest black church in Birmingham. Due to its prime position in the town it was often used to hold meetings and a rallying point for many civil rights activists. So it wasn’t by accident that the Ku Klux Klan made this church their target. The church itself was built in a Byzantine-style with two domed towers and a large basement, which served as the meeting place for influential activists, even attracting names such as Martin Luther King.

Two members of the Ku Klux Klan, Bobby Frank Cherry and Robert Edward Chambliss (also known as ‘Dynamite Bob’) moved stealthily towards the 16th Street Baptist Church in the early hours of Sunday morning. Underneath a set of steps at the side of the church, the two men planted 19 sticks of dynamite and then left as quickly as they had come.

At approximately 10.15 a.m., 80 children were starting to assemble in the basement of the church to hear prayers on the church’s Youth Day. Suddenly there was a tremendous explosion, which blew a hole in the wall at the back of the church, destroyed the steps and destroyed all the stained glass windows – with the exception of one, which depicted Jesus Christ leading young children. Five cars that were parked behind the church were also badly damaged or destroyed, and the windows in a building opposite were completely blown out.

The callous attack on innocent victims took the lives of four young girls – Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Denise McNair – and a further 22 victims were badly injured.

One 14-year-old girl who survived the blast described what happened when the bomb went off as follows:

 

I heard something that sounded, at first, a little like thunder and then just this terrific noise and the windows came crashing in. And then a lot of screaming, just a lot of screaming and I heard someone say, ‘Hit the floor’. And I remember being on the floor . . . and it was real quiet.

 

The nation was stunned and outraged by the attack, which sparked a spate of violence in Birmingham city, with two more young African-American children dead by nightfall. Johnnie Robinson, who was 16, was shot by police when he threw stones at a car carrying white people, and 13-year-old Virgil Ware was killed by two white people riding on a motorcycle.

The governor of Alabama, George Wallace, was accused by local civil rights activists of arranging the killings. The former Birmingham police commissioner, Eugene Connor, made matters even worse by saying to a large crowd of people at a citizen’s meeting, that if they wanted to blame anyone they should blame the Supreme Court. He also put forward that it could possibly be the African- Americans themselves who could have detonated the bomb intentionally to bring attention to their cause.

However, a witness eventually came forward and said he could identify Robert Chambliss, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, as the man who had placed the bomb under the steps of the church. Chambliss was arrested and charged with murder and possession of explosives. Following a trial on October 8, 1963, he was found not guilty of murder and charged with six month’s imprisonment and a fine for the possession of the dynamite.

It was more than a decade before the file on the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was reopened. Bill Baxley, the attorney general of Alabama, asked to see the original FBI files on the case and soon found that they had indeed accumulated a large amount of evidence that had not been brought to light in the first trial. Chambliss was tried once again in November 1977, and with the new evidence, he was found guilty of murder and given a life sentence. He died in Alabama prison on October 29, 1985, having never publicly admitted that he had taken any part in the bombing.

After the case was opened several more times, it wasn’t until May 17, 2000, that the FBI eventually announced that the bombing had been the work of the Ku Klux Klan splinter group known as the Cahaba Boys. They claimed the bombing had been the work of four men, Robert Chambliss, Herman Cash, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry. Cash was already dead, but Blanton and Cherry were arrested and tried. So it was 38 years after the bombing of the church that Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry were found guilty of the deaths of the four girls and given a life sentence. Bobby Cherry, who right up until his death in November 2004, always denied that he had had any part in terror attack on the Baptist church.

A song entitled Birmingham Sunday was composed by Richard Farina and recorded by Joan Baez to commemorate the aftermath of the tragedy, and in 1997 a documentary called 4 Little Girls, which was directed by Spike Lee, was nominated for an Academy Award.

 

Birmingham Sunday

 

Come round by my side and I’ll sing you a song
I’ll sing it so softly, it’ll do no one wrong
On Birmingham Sunday, the blood ran like wine
And the choir kept singing of freedom

That cold autumn morning no eyes saw the sun
And Addie Mae Collins, her number was one
At an old Baptist church, there was no need to run
And the choir kept singing of freedom

The clouds they were gray and the autumn winds blew
And Denise McNair brought the number to two
The falcon of Death was a creature they knew
And the choir kept singing of freedom

The church it was crowded but no one could see
That Cynthia Wesley’s dark number was three
Her prayers and her feelings would shame you and me
And the choir kept singing of freedom

Young Carol Robertson entered the door
And the number her killers had given was four
She asked for a blessing, but asked for no more
And the choir kept singing of freedom

On Birmingham Sunday the noise shook the ground
And people all over the earth turned around
For no one recalled a more cowardly sounds
And the choir kept singing of freedom

The men in the forest, they asked it of me
How many blackberries grew in the blue sea
And I asked them right with a tear in my eye
How many dark ships in the forest

The Sunday has come and the Sunday has gone
And I can’t do much more than to sing you this song
I’ll sing it so softly, it’ll do no one wrong
And the choirs keep singing of freedom

 

The church itself was repaired and is still functional today, remaining a central landmark in the Birmingham Civil Rights District. In 1980, the 16th Street Baptist Church was added to the National Register of Historic Places, and in 2006 it was designated as a National Historic Landmark.