BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Alabama on Friday will mark the 60th anniversary of one of the most heinous attacks during the Civil Rights Movement, the bombing of a church that killed four Black girls.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the nation’s highest court, will give the keynote address at the remembrance Friday morning at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.
On the morning of Sept. 15, 1963, dynamite planted by Ku Klux Klan members exploded at the church, killing the girls and shocking the nation. The large, prominent church was targeted because it was a center of the African American community and the site of mass meetings during the Civil Rights Movement.
The girls were gathered in a downstairs washroom to freshen up before Sunday services when the blast rocked the church. The explosion killed 11-year-old Denise McNair, and Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins, all 14. A fifth girl, Sarah Collins Rudolph, the sister of Addie Mae, was in the room and was severely injured but survived.