The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963 #3

setember15 1963

11-year-old Denise McNair and three 14-year-olds: Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins were killed when a dynamite bomb exploded at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The girls had been in a basement dressing room, discussing their first days at school and preparing for the 11:00am Adult Service. The church had been a center for many civil rights rallies and meetings, and after the tragedy, it became a focal point drawing many moderate whites into the civil rights movement. when the watson family where in the way to brimaham they


September 15, 1963


there was a bomb in Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church which resulted in the death of four innocent black girls, was the nadir of the Civil Rights movement in Birmingham and perhaps one of the darkest days in Birmingham's history. there was a bomb an 4 littel girl die. City authorities, never sympathetic to blacks, did very little to bring the bombers to justice. Not until 1977 was one of the bombers convicted. Locally, the bombing brought the factional Civil Rights leaderstogether. Nationally, the bombing gave the movement not just a face, but four faces, four young, innocent faces.the parent got sad and they told story about therr dauther.

setember 15 1963

when the were dead thre parent made a funer for the girls that die. on the yare that the 4 littel girls bdie they made a book about the four littel girles . Throughout my academic learning of the civil rights movement, certain people and places were repeated ad nauseum. Martin Luther King Jr. with his wonderful dream, Brown vs. Board of Ed giving poor black kids a chance, and Rosa Parks didnt want to get up so now Black people have their freedoms.
Aside from being overly simplistic (which essentially dehumanizes and constrains the actual power of the movement), I always wondered, where were the young people? Were we innocent bystanders? Were we making history?
The tragic story of Denise McNair, Cynthia


Throughout my academic learning of the civil rights movement, certain people and places were repeated ad nauseum. Martin Luther King Jr. with his wonderful dream, Brown vs. Board of Ed giving poor black kids a chance, and Rosa Parks didnt want to get up so now Black people have their freedoms.

Aside from being overly simplistic (which essentially dehumanizes and constrains the actual power of the movement), I always wondered, where were the young people? Were we innocent bystanders? Were we making history?



The tragic story of Denise McNair, Cynthia

for on this day we are sad aboat the littel girl an