It’s a place I’ll be drawn to for the rest of my life
I was 7, maybe 8, when I begged my father to take me to see a movie called The Shaggy Dog and had to enter the downtown Melba Theater through an alley stairway that led to the balcony where black folks had to sit. The place was filthy. I was embarrassed and sorry I had talked my dad into taking me. It was the last time I ever asked such a favor.
Our social life revolved around the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. There was something going on there seven days a week; potluck dinners, plays, music, activities for the kids. One Emancipation Day, Jackie Robinson, the first black player welcomed into the major leagues, came to speak to the congregation. It was a wonderful place where everyone felt at home, safe.
That changed on Sunday, September 15, 1963, when an exploding package of dynamite, put in place the night before by Ku Klux Klan members, killed four girls in the church basement. (more…)
September 15, 1963
On Sunday morning, September 15, we attended the early morning service at Shades Valley Presbyterian Church. Dad sat with the four children while Mom sang in the choir, in the balcony behind us. After Sunday school, Dad drove us home, squeezed into the VW beetle. Mom had to stay with the choir for the second service at eleven o’clock, so Dad would prepare lunch for everyone. We changed into comfortable play clothes as soon as we got home.
Before he started the charcoal grill on the back patio, below the kitchen and dining room windows, Dad turned on the radio. (more…)
“In church no less.”
I was standing on my grandparents’ front porch in Norwood when I heard the blast at 16th Street Baptist. I remember my immediate thought was “that was a big one.” Sad to think that a 9 year old would be accustomed to explosions. But from our house in Bush Hills I had already heard several. Shotgun blasts were not at all uncommon.
When the news came out, my thought was, “Great, they’re killing us kids now. In church no less.” (more…)
Surrounded by History – and confused
In the past few years I have realized that growing up in Birmingham and reaching maturity in the 1960s, I was surrounded by History. At times, it felt like History was literally pulling me into its widening vortex.
I was fifteen in the spring of 1963. As a white Birmingham teenager observing the critical events in our city at a great distance, I was confused. (more…)
I had nightmares about the three coffins
In the fall of 1963, we were shocked by the vicious and cowardly bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, one of Birmingham’s most prominent African American churches. We soon learned that four innocent young African American girls had been killed; I was devastated to hear that one of them was a good friend and classmate, Cynthia. I’ll never forget that Sunday morning in church at Sixth Avenue Baptist, when our minister, Reverend Porter, announced that our sister church had been bombed. Congregation members immediately left their seats, in a state of shock, because our relatives and friends belonged to that church. (more…)