The 16th Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama

 

During a recent trip, we stopped at several historically important civil rights sites in the southern United States. One of our stops was in Birmingham, Alabama to see the exterior of the 16th Street Baptist Church and to visit Kelly Ingram Park across the street. Here is a short discussion from Wikipedia about the importance of this church. 

The 16th Street Baptist Church is a Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, United States, affiliated with the Progressive National Baptist Convention. In 1963, the church was bombed by Ku Klux Klan members. The bombing killed four young girls in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement. The church is still in operation and is a central landmark in the Birmingham Civil Rights District. It was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 2006. Since 2008, it has also been on the UNESCO list of tentative World Heritage Sites.

Here is a description of the events in 1963 from the same article.

During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the 16th Street Baptist Church served as an organizational headquarters, site of mass meetings and rallying point for African Americans protesting widespread institutionalized racism in Birmingham, Alabama, and the South. The reverends Fred Shuttlesworth, who was the chief local organizer, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)) leader Martin Luther King Jr., and SCLC leader James Bevel, who initiated the Children's Crusade and taught the students nonviolence, were frequent speakers at the church and led the movement.

On Sunday, September 15, 1963, Thomas Blanton, Bobby Frank Cherry and Robert Edward Chambliss, members of the Ku Klux Klan, planted 19 sticks of dynamite outside the basement of the church. At 10:22 a.m., they exploded, killing four young girls - Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Denise McNair. Twenty-two other victims suffered injuries. They were there preparing for the church's "Youth Day". A funeral for three of the four victims was attended by more than 8,000 mourners, white and black, but no city officials.

This was one of a string of more than 45 bombings within the decade. The neighborhood of Dynamite Hill was the most frequently targeted area during this time. The bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church increased Federal involvement in Alabama. President Johnson passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act the following year; and in 1965 the Voting Rights Act was passed, making literacy tests and poll taxes illegal.

Following the bombing, more than $300,000 in unsolicited gifts were received by the church and repairs were begun immediately. The church reopened on June 7, 1964. A stained glass window depicting a black Jesus, designed by John Petts, was donated by citizens of Wales and installed in the front window, facing south. 

My life changed dramatically during the 1960s. I spent two years in Argentina as a full-time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I came back with a changed perspective about poverty, racial equality, and civil rights.