The "16th Street Baptist Church Bombing" was a racially motivated terrorist attack on September 15, 1963 by members of a Ku Klux Klan group in Birmingham, Alabama in the United States. The bombing of the African-American church resulted in the deaths of four girls.
The attack was intended to instill fear among Americans who had been demonstrating for an end to segregation and to disrupt court-ordered integration of public schools. Instead, the bombing caused public outrage and helped build support for civil rights legislation by the Kennedy Administration.
The three-story Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was a rallying point for civil-rights activities through the spring of 1963. The demonstrations led to an agreement in May between the city's black leaders and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to integrate public facilities in the country. Integration was the holy grail to the Civil rights movement. Seeing blacks and whites in the same place was more than just a goal, it was a representation of equality.
In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, Bobby Frank Cherry, Thomas Blanton, Herman Cash, and Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss, members of United Klans of America, a Ku Klux Klan group, planted 19 sticks of dynamite with a delayed-time release outside the basement of the church.
At about 10:22 a.m., when 26 children were walking into the basement assembly room for closing prayers of a sermon entitled "The Love That Forgives," the bomb exploded. According to an interview on NPR on September 15th 2008, Dennise McNair's father stated that the sermon never took place because of the bombing. Four girls: Addie Mae Collins (aged 14), Denise McNair (aged 11), Carole Robertson (aged 14), and Cynthia Wesley (aged 14), were killed in the blast, and 22 additional people were injured.
The explosion blew a hole in the church's rear wall, destroyed the back steps, and left intact only the frames of all but one stained-glass window. The lone window that survived the concussion was one in which Jesus Christ was depicted leading young children, and Christ's face was blown away. In addition, five cars behind the church were damaged, two of which were destroyed, while windows in the Laundromat across the street were blown out.
