Harold Titus's Blog - Posts Tagged "addie-mae-collins"
Civil Rights Events -- Birmingham 1963 -- 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing -- A Horrendous Event
Fast forward past Governor George Wallace standing “in the schoolhouse door,” barring the admittance of two qualified black students June 11 to the University of Alabama.
Fast forward past the murder of Mississippi activist Medgar Evers, ambushed outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi, June 12.
Fast forward past Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “March on Washington” and “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial August 28.
Fast forward past Governor Wallace’s attempt September 9 to prevent black students in Birmingham, Mobile, and Tuskegee from entering five all-white elementary and secondary schools in those cities despite being ordered by federal judges not to interfere.
Fast forward past President Kennedy’s order September 10 that the Alabama National Guard be federalized and that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara use any of the nation’s armed forces he deemed necessary to enforce school desegregation in Alabama.
We stop to focus on a horrendous event that occurred on Sunday morning, September 15, at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
Many of the civil rights protest marches that took place in Birmingham during the 1960s began at the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church, which had long been a significant religious center for the city’s black population and a routine meeting place for civil rights organizers like King.
KKK members had routinely called in bomb threats intended to disrupt civil rights meetings as well as services at the church (Birmingham 1).
… the congregation of the 16th Street Baptist Church … greeted each other before the start of Sunday service. In the basement of the church, five young girls, two of them sisters, gathered in the ladies room in their best dresses, happily chatting about the first days of the new school year. It was Youth Day and excitement filled the air, they were going to take part in the Sunday adult service (16th Street NPS 1).
On September 15, 1963, 14-year-old Cynthia Morris Wesley and three other members of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church youth choir left their Sunday school class to freshen up for their roles as ushers in the main service. The lesson for the day had been “The Love That Forgives.” Eleven-year-old Denise McNair met Cynthia and her classmates in the women’s lounge, in the northeast corner of the basement.
Carole Robertson, 14, was the most mature of the girls. She was wearing medium-high heels for the first time, shiny black ones bought the day before. Carole’s mother had gotten her a necklace to go with the shoes and put a winter coat on layaway for her.
Also in the lounge was 14-year-old Addie Mae Collins. One of eight children, Addie was a little on the shy side, but she looked radiant in her white usher’s dress. Cynthia and Carole also wore white. The three ushers were standing with young Denise by the window, which looked out onto Sixteenth Street at ground level. So elegant was this church that even the restroom window was made of stained glass.
Addie’s younger sister Sarah Collins stood at the washbowl. At the request of a Sunday school teacher, 15-year-old Bernadine Mathews came into the lounge to encourage the girls to return to their classrooms. Cynthia said she needed to push her hair up one more time. “Cynthia,” Bernadine chided her, “children who don’t obey the Lord live only half as long” (McWhorter 1-2).
Carolyn McKinstry was the 15-year-old Sunday-school secretary of 16th Street Baptist Church. In her book, While the World Watched: a Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age during the Civil Rights Movement, she narrated this:
At the end of Sunday school, I would get up and make a report. Around 10:15 a.m. I got up to collect the reports. I started upstairs. You had to pass the girls’ bathroom. I paused at the doorway, because they [Addie Mae, Carol, Cynthia, Denise] were all standing there, combing their hair, playing, and talking. We were all good friends, and we were excited about two things that Sunday. It was Youth Sunday, and that meant we got to do everything. We were the choir. We were the ushers, the speakers. The second thing was, after church we were going to have a gathering with punch and dancing. I knew my report had to be done at a certain time, so I went on up the stairs. When I got to the office, the phone was ringing. The caller on the other end of the phone said, “Three minutes.” Male caller. But he hung up just as quickly as he said that. I stepped out into the sanctuary to get more reports, and I only took about 15 steps into the sanctuary, and the bomb exploded (Joiner 1).
Sarah Collins Cox, then 12, was in the basement with her sister Addie Mae, 14, and Denise McNair, 11, a friend, getting ready to attend a youth service. "I remember Denise asking Addie to tie her belt," Cox, now 46, says in a near whisper, recalling the morning of Sept. 15, 1963. "Addie was tying her sash. Then it happened." A savage explosion of 19 sticks of dynamite stashed under a stairwell ripped through the northeast corner of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. "I couldn't see anymore because my eyes were full of glass - 23 pieces of glass," says Cox. "I didn't know what happened. I just remember calling, 'Addie, Addie.' But there was no answer. I don't remember any pain. I just remember wanting Addie" (Smith, Wescott, and Craig 1).
A motorist was blown from his car. A pedestrian calling his wife from a pay phone across the street was whooshed, receiver still in hand, into the Social Cleaners, whose front door had been whipped open.
Pastor John Cross moved toward the fog that clung to the northeast side of his church. There was a 7- by 7-foot hole in the wall of what had been the women’s lounge. The bomb had made a crater 2 1/2 feet deep and 5 1/2 feet wide, demolishing a foundation that had been a 30-inch-thick mass of stone facing over a brick-and-masonry wall (McWhorter 3).
Inside the church, a teacher screamed, “Lie on the floor! Lie on the floor!” Rafters collapsed, a skylight fell on the pulpit. Part of a stained glass window shattered, obliterating the face of Christ. A man cried: “Everybody out! Everybody out!” A stream of sobbing Negroes stumbled through the litter — past twisted metal folding chairs, past splintered wooden benches, past shredded songbooks and Bibles. A Negro woman staggered out of the Social Dry Cleaning store shrieking “Let me at ’em! I’ll kill ’em!”— and fainted. White plaster dust fell gently for a block around.
Police cars poured into the block — and even as the cops plunged into the church, some enraged Negroes began throwing rocks at them.
On top [of the rubble of bricks] was a child’s white lace choir robe. A civil defense captain lifted the hem of the robe. “Oh, my God,” he cried. “Don’t look!” Beneath lay the mangled body of a Negro girl.
Barehanded, the workers dug deeper into the rubble — until four bodies had been uncovered. The head and shoulder of one child had been completely blown off (Time 1).
“Lord, that’s Denise,” said Deacon M.W. Pippen, owner of the Social Cleaners. Denise McNair was Pippen’s granddaughter. Only then did Cross realize the corpses were girls. Pippen had recognized Denise’s no-longer-shiny patent-leather shoe. The clothes had been blown off the girls’ bodies.
Samuel Rutledge, looking for his 3 1/2-year-old son, instead found a female buried alive, moaning and bleeding from the head. He carried her through the hole toward the street. “Do you know who she is?” people asked one another. Again, Cross thought she had to be 40 or 45 years old. But Sarah Collins was only 12. After being loaded into an ambulance (colored), she sang “Jesus Loves Me” and occasionally said, “What happened? I can’t see.” The ambulance driver delivered Sarah to University Hospital and returned to pick up his next cargo, the corpse of her sister Addie Mae.
Approaching her father in the crowd on the sidewalk, Maxine Pippen McNair cried, “I can’t find Denise.” M.W. Pippen told his daughter, “She’s dead, baby. I’ve got one of her shoes.” Watching his daughter take in the significance of the shoe he held up, he screamed, “I’d like to blow the whole town up” (McWhorter 3-4).
The remains were … carried out to waiting ambulances. A youth rushed forward, lifted a sheet and wailed: “This is my sister! My God — she’s dead!”
The church‘s pastor, the Rev. John Cross, hurried up and down the sidewalk, urging the milling crowd to go home. “Please go home!” he said. “The Lord is our shepherd, and we shall not want.” Another Negro minister added his pleas. “Go home and pray for the men who did this evil deed,” he said. “We must have love in our hearts for these men.” But a Negro boy screamed, “We give love — and we get this!” And another youth yelled: “Love ’em? Love ’em? We hate ’em!” A man wept: “My grandbaby was one of those killed! Eleven years old! I helped pull the rocks off her! You know how I feel? I feel like blowing the whole town up” (Time 2-3).
Carolyn McKinstry recalled: When the bomb exploded, it felt like the building shook. Everything came crashing in, the glass and the windows in the church. I fell on the floor because someone said, “Hit the floor.” We were all on the floor for just a couple of seconds. And then I could hear people getting up and running out. I got up, and I went outside. I was looking for my two little brothers. One of the first things we noticed was that the church was already surrounded by policemen. People were in panic mode. They were everywhere looking for their family members.
When I went home that Sunday, I remember one or two people calling my mother, looking for their children. One of them was Mrs. Robertson, Carole’s mother. Later somebody else called and said that the girls in the bathroom never made it out. My heart jumped. I knew who they were talking about. I was shocked. I was numb (Joiner 2-3).
“I will never stop crying thinking about it,” Barbara Cross, now 68, told TIME in an emotional phone conversation. Her father, John Cross, was the pastor at the church, which was Birmingham’s largest African-American congregation; she was 13 and in its basement the day that Ku Klux Klan members planted a bomb under the building’s stairs. The blast was strong enough to send stone shooting into cars parked across the street and to knock people off their feet in nearby buildings. And inside the church, things were worse.
The bombing killed four of Cross’ classmates who had gone to the bathroom: three 14-year-olds, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Addie Mae Collins, and 11-year-old Denise McNair. (Sarah Collins Rudolph, often referred to as the “Fifth Little Girl,” lost an eye but survived her injuries.)
“Addie wanted me to come with her, but then the teacher stopped me and gave me a writing assignment that saved my life,” Cross recalls.
Soon after, she heard “the most horrific noises I had ever heard in my life.” That was followed by the smell of smoke.
Her first thought was that Birmingham had been attacked by Cuba, she says. “The building shook, and I was hit in the head with a light fixture. I remember everything getting dark,” she says, “and I thought the United States was being attacked.” A church official led her and her younger sister and brother out by the hand. Somehow, she made her way home, and stayed the night at the home of a neighbor who was a nurse, who removed the glass fragments from her scalp and treated the area.
Dale Long, now 66, was 11 and in the basement that day too. “Some of us boys should have headed upstairs [to services] by then, but we got carried away talking about who’s going to have the best football team,” he recalls. “Suddenly, the big floor-to-ceiling bookcases started moving, and we looked at each other and ran. Even though it was dark and dusty and smoky, I knew how to get out. I could see my dad running down the street. I had never seen my dad run before. He hugged us unlike anything I could ever remember and said we’ll be alright. He took us to his office in the motel, where reporters who were staying there were arguing over the two pay phones in the lobby that they were trying to use to report stories back [to their bureaus].”
“If it happened to older people, it wouldn’t have made a difference,” Cross argues. “How would you feel if you went to go find your child and you couldn’t? The [home] phone would be constantly ringing with white women calling my house to tell my parents, ‘We don’t all think like that.'”
[Barbara] Cross says her father “blamed himself for the bombing.”
“My parents knew the church had bomb threats, but they never told us about them because they didn’t want to scare us from going to church,” she says. “My father took responsibility because he gave Dr. King permission to use the church for protests. When he got older, he’d cry when he talked about it. He carried those wounds to his grave” (Waxman 1-4).
The bomber had hidden under a set of cinder block steps on the side of the church, tunneled under the basement and placed a bundle of dynamite under what turned out to be the girls' rest room (16th Street NPR 1).
Works cited:
“16th Street Baptist Church Bombing.” NPR. September 15, 2003. Web. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...
“16th Street Baptist Church Bombing (1963).” National Park Service. March 23, 2016. Web. https://www.nps.gov/articles/16thstre...
“Birmingham Church Bombing.” History. A&E Television Networks. August 28, 2018. Web. https://www.history.com/topics/1960s/...
Joiner, Lottie L. “50 Years Later: The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing.” Daily Beast. September 15, 2013. Web. https://www.thedailybeast.com/50-year...
McWhorter, Diance. “The Stark Reminders of the Birmingham Church Bombing.”
Smithsonian Magazine. November 2013. Web. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor...
Smith, Kyle; Wescott, Gail Cameron; and Craig, David Cobb. “The Day the Children Died.” People Magazine. Web. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/...
Time Magazine. September 27, 1963. Web. http://time.com/5394093/16th-street-b...
Waxman, Olivia B. “16th Street Baptist Church Bombing Survivors Recall a Day That Changed the Fight for Civil Rights: 'I Will Never Stop Crying Thinking About It'.” Time. Web. http://time.com/5394093/16th-street-b...
Fast forward past the murder of Mississippi activist Medgar Evers, ambushed outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi, June 12.
Fast forward past Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “March on Washington” and “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial August 28.
Fast forward past Governor Wallace’s attempt September 9 to prevent black students in Birmingham, Mobile, and Tuskegee from entering five all-white elementary and secondary schools in those cities despite being ordered by federal judges not to interfere.
Fast forward past President Kennedy’s order September 10 that the Alabama National Guard be federalized and that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara use any of the nation’s armed forces he deemed necessary to enforce school desegregation in Alabama.
We stop to focus on a horrendous event that occurred on Sunday morning, September 15, at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
Many of the civil rights protest marches that took place in Birmingham during the 1960s began at the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church, which had long been a significant religious center for the city’s black population and a routine meeting place for civil rights organizers like King.
KKK members had routinely called in bomb threats intended to disrupt civil rights meetings as well as services at the church (Birmingham 1).
… the congregation of the 16th Street Baptist Church … greeted each other before the start of Sunday service. In the basement of the church, five young girls, two of them sisters, gathered in the ladies room in their best dresses, happily chatting about the first days of the new school year. It was Youth Day and excitement filled the air, they were going to take part in the Sunday adult service (16th Street NPS 1).
On September 15, 1963, 14-year-old Cynthia Morris Wesley and three other members of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church youth choir left their Sunday school class to freshen up for their roles as ushers in the main service. The lesson for the day had been “The Love That Forgives.” Eleven-year-old Denise McNair met Cynthia and her classmates in the women’s lounge, in the northeast corner of the basement.
Carole Robertson, 14, was the most mature of the girls. She was wearing medium-high heels for the first time, shiny black ones bought the day before. Carole’s mother had gotten her a necklace to go with the shoes and put a winter coat on layaway for her.
Also in the lounge was 14-year-old Addie Mae Collins. One of eight children, Addie was a little on the shy side, but she looked radiant in her white usher’s dress. Cynthia and Carole also wore white. The three ushers were standing with young Denise by the window, which looked out onto Sixteenth Street at ground level. So elegant was this church that even the restroom window was made of stained glass.
Addie’s younger sister Sarah Collins stood at the washbowl. At the request of a Sunday school teacher, 15-year-old Bernadine Mathews came into the lounge to encourage the girls to return to their classrooms. Cynthia said she needed to push her hair up one more time. “Cynthia,” Bernadine chided her, “children who don’t obey the Lord live only half as long” (McWhorter 1-2).
Carolyn McKinstry was the 15-year-old Sunday-school secretary of 16th Street Baptist Church. In her book, While the World Watched: a Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age during the Civil Rights Movement, she narrated this:
At the end of Sunday school, I would get up and make a report. Around 10:15 a.m. I got up to collect the reports. I started upstairs. You had to pass the girls’ bathroom. I paused at the doorway, because they [Addie Mae, Carol, Cynthia, Denise] were all standing there, combing their hair, playing, and talking. We were all good friends, and we were excited about two things that Sunday. It was Youth Sunday, and that meant we got to do everything. We were the choir. We were the ushers, the speakers. The second thing was, after church we were going to have a gathering with punch and dancing. I knew my report had to be done at a certain time, so I went on up the stairs. When I got to the office, the phone was ringing. The caller on the other end of the phone said, “Three minutes.” Male caller. But he hung up just as quickly as he said that. I stepped out into the sanctuary to get more reports, and I only took about 15 steps into the sanctuary, and the bomb exploded (Joiner 1).
Sarah Collins Cox, then 12, was in the basement with her sister Addie Mae, 14, and Denise McNair, 11, a friend, getting ready to attend a youth service. "I remember Denise asking Addie to tie her belt," Cox, now 46, says in a near whisper, recalling the morning of Sept. 15, 1963. "Addie was tying her sash. Then it happened." A savage explosion of 19 sticks of dynamite stashed under a stairwell ripped through the northeast corner of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. "I couldn't see anymore because my eyes were full of glass - 23 pieces of glass," says Cox. "I didn't know what happened. I just remember calling, 'Addie, Addie.' But there was no answer. I don't remember any pain. I just remember wanting Addie" (Smith, Wescott, and Craig 1).
A motorist was blown from his car. A pedestrian calling his wife from a pay phone across the street was whooshed, receiver still in hand, into the Social Cleaners, whose front door had been whipped open.
Pastor John Cross moved toward the fog that clung to the northeast side of his church. There was a 7- by 7-foot hole in the wall of what had been the women’s lounge. The bomb had made a crater 2 1/2 feet deep and 5 1/2 feet wide, demolishing a foundation that had been a 30-inch-thick mass of stone facing over a brick-and-masonry wall (McWhorter 3).
Inside the church, a teacher screamed, “Lie on the floor! Lie on the floor!” Rafters collapsed, a skylight fell on the pulpit. Part of a stained glass window shattered, obliterating the face of Christ. A man cried: “Everybody out! Everybody out!” A stream of sobbing Negroes stumbled through the litter — past twisted metal folding chairs, past splintered wooden benches, past shredded songbooks and Bibles. A Negro woman staggered out of the Social Dry Cleaning store shrieking “Let me at ’em! I’ll kill ’em!”— and fainted. White plaster dust fell gently for a block around.
Police cars poured into the block — and even as the cops plunged into the church, some enraged Negroes began throwing rocks at them.
On top [of the rubble of bricks] was a child’s white lace choir robe. A civil defense captain lifted the hem of the robe. “Oh, my God,” he cried. “Don’t look!” Beneath lay the mangled body of a Negro girl.
Barehanded, the workers dug deeper into the rubble — until four bodies had been uncovered. The head and shoulder of one child had been completely blown off (Time 1).
“Lord, that’s Denise,” said Deacon M.W. Pippen, owner of the Social Cleaners. Denise McNair was Pippen’s granddaughter. Only then did Cross realize the corpses were girls. Pippen had recognized Denise’s no-longer-shiny patent-leather shoe. The clothes had been blown off the girls’ bodies.
Samuel Rutledge, looking for his 3 1/2-year-old son, instead found a female buried alive, moaning and bleeding from the head. He carried her through the hole toward the street. “Do you know who she is?” people asked one another. Again, Cross thought she had to be 40 or 45 years old. But Sarah Collins was only 12. After being loaded into an ambulance (colored), she sang “Jesus Loves Me” and occasionally said, “What happened? I can’t see.” The ambulance driver delivered Sarah to University Hospital and returned to pick up his next cargo, the corpse of her sister Addie Mae.
Approaching her father in the crowd on the sidewalk, Maxine Pippen McNair cried, “I can’t find Denise.” M.W. Pippen told his daughter, “She’s dead, baby. I’ve got one of her shoes.” Watching his daughter take in the significance of the shoe he held up, he screamed, “I’d like to blow the whole town up” (McWhorter 3-4).
The remains were … carried out to waiting ambulances. A youth rushed forward, lifted a sheet and wailed: “This is my sister! My God — she’s dead!”
The church‘s pastor, the Rev. John Cross, hurried up and down the sidewalk, urging the milling crowd to go home. “Please go home!” he said. “The Lord is our shepherd, and we shall not want.” Another Negro minister added his pleas. “Go home and pray for the men who did this evil deed,” he said. “We must have love in our hearts for these men.” But a Negro boy screamed, “We give love — and we get this!” And another youth yelled: “Love ’em? Love ’em? We hate ’em!” A man wept: “My grandbaby was one of those killed! Eleven years old! I helped pull the rocks off her! You know how I feel? I feel like blowing the whole town up” (Time 2-3).
Carolyn McKinstry recalled: When the bomb exploded, it felt like the building shook. Everything came crashing in, the glass and the windows in the church. I fell on the floor because someone said, “Hit the floor.” We were all on the floor for just a couple of seconds. And then I could hear people getting up and running out. I got up, and I went outside. I was looking for my two little brothers. One of the first things we noticed was that the church was already surrounded by policemen. People were in panic mode. They were everywhere looking for their family members.
When I went home that Sunday, I remember one or two people calling my mother, looking for their children. One of them was Mrs. Robertson, Carole’s mother. Later somebody else called and said that the girls in the bathroom never made it out. My heart jumped. I knew who they were talking about. I was shocked. I was numb (Joiner 2-3).
“I will never stop crying thinking about it,” Barbara Cross, now 68, told TIME in an emotional phone conversation. Her father, John Cross, was the pastor at the church, which was Birmingham’s largest African-American congregation; she was 13 and in its basement the day that Ku Klux Klan members planted a bomb under the building’s stairs. The blast was strong enough to send stone shooting into cars parked across the street and to knock people off their feet in nearby buildings. And inside the church, things were worse.
The bombing killed four of Cross’ classmates who had gone to the bathroom: three 14-year-olds, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Addie Mae Collins, and 11-year-old Denise McNair. (Sarah Collins Rudolph, often referred to as the “Fifth Little Girl,” lost an eye but survived her injuries.)
“Addie wanted me to come with her, but then the teacher stopped me and gave me a writing assignment that saved my life,” Cross recalls.
Soon after, she heard “the most horrific noises I had ever heard in my life.” That was followed by the smell of smoke.
Her first thought was that Birmingham had been attacked by Cuba, she says. “The building shook, and I was hit in the head with a light fixture. I remember everything getting dark,” she says, “and I thought the United States was being attacked.” A church official led her and her younger sister and brother out by the hand. Somehow, she made her way home, and stayed the night at the home of a neighbor who was a nurse, who removed the glass fragments from her scalp and treated the area.
Dale Long, now 66, was 11 and in the basement that day too. “Some of us boys should have headed upstairs [to services] by then, but we got carried away talking about who’s going to have the best football team,” he recalls. “Suddenly, the big floor-to-ceiling bookcases started moving, and we looked at each other and ran. Even though it was dark and dusty and smoky, I knew how to get out. I could see my dad running down the street. I had never seen my dad run before. He hugged us unlike anything I could ever remember and said we’ll be alright. He took us to his office in the motel, where reporters who were staying there were arguing over the two pay phones in the lobby that they were trying to use to report stories back [to their bureaus].”
“If it happened to older people, it wouldn’t have made a difference,” Cross argues. “How would you feel if you went to go find your child and you couldn’t? The [home] phone would be constantly ringing with white women calling my house to tell my parents, ‘We don’t all think like that.'”
[Barbara] Cross says her father “blamed himself for the bombing.”
“My parents knew the church had bomb threats, but they never told us about them because they didn’t want to scare us from going to church,” she says. “My father took responsibility because he gave Dr. King permission to use the church for protests. When he got older, he’d cry when he talked about it. He carried those wounds to his grave” (Waxman 1-4).
The bomber had hidden under a set of cinder block steps on the side of the church, tunneled under the basement and placed a bundle of dynamite under what turned out to be the girls' rest room (16th Street NPR 1).
Works cited:
“16th Street Baptist Church Bombing.” NPR. September 15, 2003. Web. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...
“16th Street Baptist Church Bombing (1963).” National Park Service. March 23, 2016. Web. https://www.nps.gov/articles/16thstre...
“Birmingham Church Bombing.” History. A&E Television Networks. August 28, 2018. Web. https://www.history.com/topics/1960s/...
Joiner, Lottie L. “50 Years Later: The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing.” Daily Beast. September 15, 2013. Web. https://www.thedailybeast.com/50-year...
McWhorter, Diance. “The Stark Reminders of the Birmingham Church Bombing.”
Smithsonian Magazine. November 2013. Web. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor...
Smith, Kyle; Wescott, Gail Cameron; and Craig, David Cobb. “The Day the Children Died.” People Magazine. Web. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/...
Time Magazine. September 27, 1963. Web. http://time.com/5394093/16th-street-b...
Waxman, Olivia B. “16th Street Baptist Church Bombing Survivors Recall a Day That Changed the Fight for Civil Rights: 'I Will Never Stop Crying Thinking About It'.” Time. Web. http://time.com/5394093/16th-street-b...
Civil Rights Events -- Birmingham 1963 -- 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing -- Remembering the Victims
The four girls killed were
Addie Mae Collins, 14,
Denise McNair, 11,
Carole Robertson, 14,
Cynthia Wesley, 14,
Janie, Sarah, and Addie Mae Collins
While Sarah’s parents comforted her at the hospital, her older sister Janie, 16, who had survived the bombing unscathed, was taken to the University Hospital morgue to help identify a body. "I looked at the face, and I couldn't tell who it was," she says of the crumpled form she viewed. "Then I saw this little brown shoe - you know, like a loafer - and I recognized it right away."
...
After the blast, Sarah's face was so drenched in blood, says Cross, that "when they asked me who she was, I had to say I had no idea." In the hospital, Sarah, whose eyes were bandaged, wondered why Addie didn't visit with the rest of the family. Her sister Janie told her that "Addie's back is hurting." Sarah learned of Addie's death when she overheard Janie talking to a nurse. "It hurt real bad," Sarah says. "I just didn't know what I would do without Addie." Sarah spent three months in the hospital, ultimately losing her right eye.
Addie's family was the poorest of the four. She was one of seven children born to Oscar Collins, a janitor, and Alice, a homemaker. "It was clear that she lacked things," recalls Rev. John Cross, the pastor of the church at the time of the bombing. "But she was a quiet, sweet girl." And, Sarah adds, a budding artist: "She could draw people real good" (Smith, Wescott, and Craig 1-2).
Addie Mae Collins and two of her sisters would go door to door every day after school, selling their mother's handmade cotton aprons and potholders.
The trio collected 35 cents for potholders and 50 cents for aprons. The bibbed aprons netted 75 cents.
"Addie liked to do it. She looked forward to it," said sister Sarah … "We sold a lot of them."
When she wasn't selling her mother's wares, Addie liked to play hopscotch, sing in the church choir, draw portraits, and wear bright colors.
The Hill Elementary School eighth-grader loved to pitch while playing ball, too. "I remember that underhand," said older sister Janie,,,.
She also remembers Addie's spirit. "She wasn't a shy or timid person. Addie was a courageous person."
Addie, born April 18, 1949, was the seventh of eight children born to Oscar and Alice Collins. When disagreements erupted among the siblings inside the home on Sixth Court West, Addie was the peacemaker.
"She just always wanted us to love one another and treat each other right," Mrs. Rudolph [Sarah] said. "She was a happy person also, and she loved life."
The routine was the same every Saturday night at the Collins household - starching Sunday dresses for church. Sept. 14, 1963, was no different when Addie pulled out a white dress. Older sister Flora pressed and curled Addie's short hair.
"We thought it looked pretty on her," said Mrs. Gaines [Janie].
… "I feel like I lost my best friend," said Mrs. Rudolph [Sarah]. "We were always going places together" (Temple 1-3).
Cynthia Wesley
Cynthia Wesley, whose parents were … teachers, left the house that day having been admonished by her mother to adjust her slip to be presentable in church (Smith, Wescott, and Craig 5).
There were times when Cynthia Wesley's father came home weary after a night of patrolling his Smithfield neighborhood for would-be mischief-makers. Or worse, bombers.
Claude A. Wesley was one of several men who volunteered to ensure another peaceful night on Dynamite Hill, nicknamed for the frequent and unsolved bombings in a former white neighborhood that was increasingly a home to blacks.
The Wesleys tried to protect their daughter from segregation's brutality.
"We were extremely naive," remembers friend and playmate Karen Floyd Savage. "We didn't really discuss things in depth like that."
The first adopted daughter of Claude and Gertrude Wesley, Cynthia was a petite girl with a narrow face and size 2 dress. Cynthia's mother made her clothes, which fit her thin frame perfectly.
She attended the now-defunct Ullman High School, where she did well in math, reading and the band. She invited friends to parties in her back yard, playing soulful tunes and serving refreshments. She was born April 30, 1949.
"Cynthia was just full of fun all the time," Mrs. Savage said. "We were constantly laughing."
It was while the two girls attended Wilkerson Elementary School that Cynthia traded her gold-band ring topped with a clear, rectangular stone for a 1954 class ring that belonged to Mrs. Savage.
"We just sort of liked each others' rings and we just traded with no question of wanting it back," Mrs. Savage said.
Cynthia made friends easily, talking often to close pal Rickey Powell. On Sept. 14, 1963, she invited Rickey to church the next day for a Sunday youth program. Powell accepted, only to reluctantly decline when his mother wanted him to accompany her to a funeral.
"We were like peas in a pod," Powell said. "That was my best bud."
When Cynthia died in the church blast, she was still wearing the ring Mrs. Savage gave her when they were younger. Cynthia's father identified her by that ring when he went to the morgue.
The death of the four girls crushed Mrs. Savage.
"I was so young. I never realized someone would hate you so much that they would go to that extent. In a way, that was sort of the death of my own innocence" (Temple 3-4).
Denise McNair
Denise McNair, the daughter of photo shop owner Chris and schoolteacher Maxine, was an inquisitive girl who never understood why she couldn't get a sandwich at the same counter as white children (Smith, Wescott, and Craig 5).
Denise McNair liked her dolls, left mudpies in the mailbox for childhood crushes and organized a neighborhood fund-raiser to fight muscular dystrophy.
Born Nov. 17, 1951, Carol Denise McNair was the first child of Chris and Maxine McNair. Her playmates called her Niecie.
A pupil at Center Street Elementary School, she had a knack of gathering neighborhood children to play on the block. She held tea parties, belonged to the Brownies and played baseball.
"Everybody liked her even if they didn't like each other," said childhood friend Rhonda Nunn Thomas. "She could play with anybody."
She and Rhonda would dream of husbands, children and careers. "At one point I would be delivering babies and she was going to be the pediatrician," Mrs. Thomas said.
At some point in her young life, Denise asked the neighborhood children to put on skits and dance routines and to read poetry in a big production to raise money for muscular dystrophy. It became an annual event. People gathered in the yard to watch the show in Denise's carport — the main stage. Children donated their pennies, dimes and nickels. Adults gave larger sums.
The muscular dystrophy fund-raiser was always Denise's project — one that nobody refused.
"It was the idea we were doing something special for some kids," Mrs. Thomas said. "How could you turn it down?"
A relative always thought the girl with the thick, shoulder-length hair and sparkling eyes would be a teacher because she was "a leader from the heart."
Friend and retired dentist Florita Jamison Askew remembers Denise as a child who smiled a lot, even for the camera when she lost her baby teeth.
"She was always a ham," Mrs. Askew said.
"I bet she would have been a real go-getter. She and Carole (Robertson) both. I just wonder sometimes."
Smithfield Recreation Center's auditorium became a dance school every Saturday afternoon when eager girls arrived for lessons in tap, ballet and modern jazz (Temple 5-7).
Carole Robertson
Carole Robertson, whose father was a band master at an elementary school and whose mother was a librarian, was an avid reader, dancer and clarinet player. (Smith, Wescott, and Craig 5).
Carole Robertson, wearing a leotard and toting black patent leather tap shoes and pink ballet slippers, was among the crowd [at the dance school every Saturday].
"We didn't have any problems getting our chores done so we could get to dancing class on Saturdays," said Florita Jamison Askew, who attended classes with Carole and Carole's big sister. "Nobody ever wanted to miss them."
Students worked hard on their ballet and shuffle steps in preparation for the annual spring recital, where they got to wear makeup and dance with their hair down." It was a lot of fun," Mrs. Askew said.
Born April 24, 1949, Carole was the third child of Alpha and Alvin Robertson. Older siblings were Dianne and Alvin.
Carole was an avid reader and straight-A student who belonged to Jack and Jill of America, the Girl Scouts, the Parker High School marching band and science club. She also had attended Wilkerson Elementary School, where she sang in the choir.
Carole walked fast and with a smile.
"She moved through the halls rapidly, not running, but just full of life," said retired Birmingham teacher Lottie Palmer, who was a science club sponsor." She was a girl that was anxious to succeed and do well.
Carole grew up in a Smithfield home that was full of love, friends and the aroma of good cooking, especially her mother's spaghetti.
"There was a lot of warmth in the house. The food was good and the people were kind," Mrs. Askew said. "That was kind of my second home."
Inside the one-story home with the wrap-around porch, Mrs. Askew and the Robertson girls practiced dances such as the cha-cha and tried out different hairstyles — often on Carole, who didn't mind being the model.
Carole once told Mrs. Askew, now a retired dentist, about her desire to preserve the past.
"I remember a statement she made — she wanted to teach history or do something historical. I thought how ironic it was that she would remain a part of history forever."
In 1976, Chicago residents established the Carole Robertson Center for Learning, a social service agency that serves children and their families. Named after Carole, it is dedicated to the memory of all four girls.
Members of the Jack and Jill choir were scheduled to sing at Carole's funeral Sept. 17, 1963, at St. John AME Church. "Of course, we didn't do much singing," said choir member Karen Floyd Savage. "We cried through it" (Temple 7-9).
Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a eulogy of the four slain girls September 18. Here are excerpts.
... they died nobly. They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. And so this afternoon in a real sense they have something to say to each of us in their death. They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician [Audience:] (Yeah) who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats (Yeah) and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans. (Speak) They have something to say to every Negro (Yeah) who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice. They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream.
I hope you can find some consolation from Christianity's affirmation that death is not the end. Death is not a period that ends the great sentence of life, but a comma that punctuates it to more lofty significance. Death is not a blind alley that leads the human race into a state of nothingness, but an open door which leads man into life eternal. Let this daring faith, this great invincible surmise, be your sustaining power during these trying days.
Today, as I stand over the remains of these beautiful, darling girls, I paraphrase the words of Shakespeare: (Yeah, Well): Good night, sweet princesses. Good night, those who symbolize a new day. (Yeah, Yes) And may the flight of angels (That’s right) take thee to thy eternal rest. God bless you (Martin 1-2).
Works cited:
“Martin Luther King's Eulogy for the Young Victims of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing, delivered at Sixth Avenue Baptist Church.” Stanford: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. September 18, 1963. Web. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/...
Smith, Kyle; Wescott, Gail Cameron; and Craig, David Cobb. “The Day the Children Died.” People Magazine. Web. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/...
Temple, Chandra. “Profiles of the Victims.” The Birmingham News. Web. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/...
Addie Mae Collins, 14,
Denise McNair, 11,
Carole Robertson, 14,
Cynthia Wesley, 14,
Janie, Sarah, and Addie Mae Collins
While Sarah’s parents comforted her at the hospital, her older sister Janie, 16, who had survived the bombing unscathed, was taken to the University Hospital morgue to help identify a body. "I looked at the face, and I couldn't tell who it was," she says of the crumpled form she viewed. "Then I saw this little brown shoe - you know, like a loafer - and I recognized it right away."
...
After the blast, Sarah's face was so drenched in blood, says Cross, that "when they asked me who she was, I had to say I had no idea." In the hospital, Sarah, whose eyes were bandaged, wondered why Addie didn't visit with the rest of the family. Her sister Janie told her that "Addie's back is hurting." Sarah learned of Addie's death when she overheard Janie talking to a nurse. "It hurt real bad," Sarah says. "I just didn't know what I would do without Addie." Sarah spent three months in the hospital, ultimately losing her right eye.
Addie's family was the poorest of the four. She was one of seven children born to Oscar Collins, a janitor, and Alice, a homemaker. "It was clear that she lacked things," recalls Rev. John Cross, the pastor of the church at the time of the bombing. "But she was a quiet, sweet girl." And, Sarah adds, a budding artist: "She could draw people real good" (Smith, Wescott, and Craig 1-2).
Addie Mae Collins and two of her sisters would go door to door every day after school, selling their mother's handmade cotton aprons and potholders.
The trio collected 35 cents for potholders and 50 cents for aprons. The bibbed aprons netted 75 cents.
"Addie liked to do it. She looked forward to it," said sister Sarah … "We sold a lot of them."
When she wasn't selling her mother's wares, Addie liked to play hopscotch, sing in the church choir, draw portraits, and wear bright colors.
The Hill Elementary School eighth-grader loved to pitch while playing ball, too. "I remember that underhand," said older sister Janie,,,.
She also remembers Addie's spirit. "She wasn't a shy or timid person. Addie was a courageous person."
Addie, born April 18, 1949, was the seventh of eight children born to Oscar and Alice Collins. When disagreements erupted among the siblings inside the home on Sixth Court West, Addie was the peacemaker.
"She just always wanted us to love one another and treat each other right," Mrs. Rudolph [Sarah] said. "She was a happy person also, and she loved life."
The routine was the same every Saturday night at the Collins household - starching Sunday dresses for church. Sept. 14, 1963, was no different when Addie pulled out a white dress. Older sister Flora pressed and curled Addie's short hair.
"We thought it looked pretty on her," said Mrs. Gaines [Janie].
… "I feel like I lost my best friend," said Mrs. Rudolph [Sarah]. "We were always going places together" (Temple 1-3).
Cynthia Wesley
Cynthia Wesley, whose parents were … teachers, left the house that day having been admonished by her mother to adjust her slip to be presentable in church (Smith, Wescott, and Craig 5).
There were times when Cynthia Wesley's father came home weary after a night of patrolling his Smithfield neighborhood for would-be mischief-makers. Or worse, bombers.
Claude A. Wesley was one of several men who volunteered to ensure another peaceful night on Dynamite Hill, nicknamed for the frequent and unsolved bombings in a former white neighborhood that was increasingly a home to blacks.
The Wesleys tried to protect their daughter from segregation's brutality.
"We were extremely naive," remembers friend and playmate Karen Floyd Savage. "We didn't really discuss things in depth like that."
The first adopted daughter of Claude and Gertrude Wesley, Cynthia was a petite girl with a narrow face and size 2 dress. Cynthia's mother made her clothes, which fit her thin frame perfectly.
She attended the now-defunct Ullman High School, where she did well in math, reading and the band. She invited friends to parties in her back yard, playing soulful tunes and serving refreshments. She was born April 30, 1949.
"Cynthia was just full of fun all the time," Mrs. Savage said. "We were constantly laughing."
It was while the two girls attended Wilkerson Elementary School that Cynthia traded her gold-band ring topped with a clear, rectangular stone for a 1954 class ring that belonged to Mrs. Savage.
"We just sort of liked each others' rings and we just traded with no question of wanting it back," Mrs. Savage said.
Cynthia made friends easily, talking often to close pal Rickey Powell. On Sept. 14, 1963, she invited Rickey to church the next day for a Sunday youth program. Powell accepted, only to reluctantly decline when his mother wanted him to accompany her to a funeral.
"We were like peas in a pod," Powell said. "That was my best bud."
When Cynthia died in the church blast, she was still wearing the ring Mrs. Savage gave her when they were younger. Cynthia's father identified her by that ring when he went to the morgue.
The death of the four girls crushed Mrs. Savage.
"I was so young. I never realized someone would hate you so much that they would go to that extent. In a way, that was sort of the death of my own innocence" (Temple 3-4).
Denise McNair
Denise McNair, the daughter of photo shop owner Chris and schoolteacher Maxine, was an inquisitive girl who never understood why she couldn't get a sandwich at the same counter as white children (Smith, Wescott, and Craig 5).
Denise McNair liked her dolls, left mudpies in the mailbox for childhood crushes and organized a neighborhood fund-raiser to fight muscular dystrophy.
Born Nov. 17, 1951, Carol Denise McNair was the first child of Chris and Maxine McNair. Her playmates called her Niecie.
A pupil at Center Street Elementary School, she had a knack of gathering neighborhood children to play on the block. She held tea parties, belonged to the Brownies and played baseball.
"Everybody liked her even if they didn't like each other," said childhood friend Rhonda Nunn Thomas. "She could play with anybody."
She and Rhonda would dream of husbands, children and careers. "At one point I would be delivering babies and she was going to be the pediatrician," Mrs. Thomas said.
At some point in her young life, Denise asked the neighborhood children to put on skits and dance routines and to read poetry in a big production to raise money for muscular dystrophy. It became an annual event. People gathered in the yard to watch the show in Denise's carport — the main stage. Children donated their pennies, dimes and nickels. Adults gave larger sums.
The muscular dystrophy fund-raiser was always Denise's project — one that nobody refused.
"It was the idea we were doing something special for some kids," Mrs. Thomas said. "How could you turn it down?"
A relative always thought the girl with the thick, shoulder-length hair and sparkling eyes would be a teacher because she was "a leader from the heart."
Friend and retired dentist Florita Jamison Askew remembers Denise as a child who smiled a lot, even for the camera when she lost her baby teeth.
"She was always a ham," Mrs. Askew said.
"I bet she would have been a real go-getter. She and Carole (Robertson) both. I just wonder sometimes."
Smithfield Recreation Center's auditorium became a dance school every Saturday afternoon when eager girls arrived for lessons in tap, ballet and modern jazz (Temple 5-7).
Carole Robertson
Carole Robertson, whose father was a band master at an elementary school and whose mother was a librarian, was an avid reader, dancer and clarinet player. (Smith, Wescott, and Craig 5).
Carole Robertson, wearing a leotard and toting black patent leather tap shoes and pink ballet slippers, was among the crowd [at the dance school every Saturday].
"We didn't have any problems getting our chores done so we could get to dancing class on Saturdays," said Florita Jamison Askew, who attended classes with Carole and Carole's big sister. "Nobody ever wanted to miss them."
Students worked hard on their ballet and shuffle steps in preparation for the annual spring recital, where they got to wear makeup and dance with their hair down." It was a lot of fun," Mrs. Askew said.
Born April 24, 1949, Carole was the third child of Alpha and Alvin Robertson. Older siblings were Dianne and Alvin.
Carole was an avid reader and straight-A student who belonged to Jack and Jill of America, the Girl Scouts, the Parker High School marching band and science club. She also had attended Wilkerson Elementary School, where she sang in the choir.
Carole walked fast and with a smile.
"She moved through the halls rapidly, not running, but just full of life," said retired Birmingham teacher Lottie Palmer, who was a science club sponsor." She was a girl that was anxious to succeed and do well.
Carole grew up in a Smithfield home that was full of love, friends and the aroma of good cooking, especially her mother's spaghetti.
"There was a lot of warmth in the house. The food was good and the people were kind," Mrs. Askew said. "That was kind of my second home."
Inside the one-story home with the wrap-around porch, Mrs. Askew and the Robertson girls practiced dances such as the cha-cha and tried out different hairstyles — often on Carole, who didn't mind being the model.
Carole once told Mrs. Askew, now a retired dentist, about her desire to preserve the past.
"I remember a statement she made — she wanted to teach history or do something historical. I thought how ironic it was that she would remain a part of history forever."
In 1976, Chicago residents established the Carole Robertson Center for Learning, a social service agency that serves children and their families. Named after Carole, it is dedicated to the memory of all four girls.
Members of the Jack and Jill choir were scheduled to sing at Carole's funeral Sept. 17, 1963, at St. John AME Church. "Of course, we didn't do much singing," said choir member Karen Floyd Savage. "We cried through it" (Temple 7-9).
Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a eulogy of the four slain girls September 18. Here are excerpts.
... they died nobly. They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. And so this afternoon in a real sense they have something to say to each of us in their death. They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician [Audience:] (Yeah) who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats (Yeah) and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans. (Speak) They have something to say to every Negro (Yeah) who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice. They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream.
I hope you can find some consolation from Christianity's affirmation that death is not the end. Death is not a period that ends the great sentence of life, but a comma that punctuates it to more lofty significance. Death is not a blind alley that leads the human race into a state of nothingness, but an open door which leads man into life eternal. Let this daring faith, this great invincible surmise, be your sustaining power during these trying days.
Today, as I stand over the remains of these beautiful, darling girls, I paraphrase the words of Shakespeare: (Yeah, Well): Good night, sweet princesses. Good night, those who symbolize a new day. (Yeah, Yes) And may the flight of angels (That’s right) take thee to thy eternal rest. God bless you (Martin 1-2).
Works cited:
“Martin Luther King's Eulogy for the Young Victims of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing, delivered at Sixth Avenue Baptist Church.” Stanford: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. September 18, 1963. Web. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/...
Smith, Kyle; Wescott, Gail Cameron; and Craig, David Cobb. “The Day the Children Died.” People Magazine. Web. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/...
Temple, Chandra. “Profiles of the Victims.” The Birmingham News. Web. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/...
