Video: '16th St. Baptist Church Bombing - 1963 | Today In History | 15 Sept 17'
(Sunday, September 15, 1963, 10:22 a.m. CST; during the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, part of the civil rights movement and the Birmingham campaign) — Four girls were killed this morning when a bomb set by a white supremacist terrorist group exploded in the basement of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, where 80 African-American children were attending Sunday school.
Four girls—Addie Mae Collins, 14, Carol Denise McNair, 11, Carole Rosamond Robertson, 14, and Cynthia Dionne Wesley, 14 — were killed in the attack.
Video: 'The Fabulous Sixties: 1963' (16th Street Baptist Church bombing at 15:28)
The explosion was so intense that one of the girls’ bodies was decapitated and so badly mutilated that her body could be identified only through her clothing and a ring.
Another victim was killed by a piece of mortar embedded in her skull.
Video: 'Bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church | American Freedom Stories | Biography'
The pastor of the church, the Reverend John Cross, recollected in 2001 that the girls’ bodies were found “stacked on top of each other, clung together.”
All four girls were pronounced dead on arrival at the Hillman Emergency Clinic.
Two black teenage boys were shot to death later this day as citywide rioting broke out.
Described by Martin Luther King Jr. as “one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity,” the explosion injured an additional 14 and 22 additional people, including Addie Mae’s younger sister, 12-year-old Sarah Collins. She had 21 pieces of glass embedded in her face and was blinded in one eye.
In her later recollections of the bombing, Collins would recall that in the moments immediately before the explosion, she had watched her sister, Addie, tying her dress sash.
Video: 'Remembering the Birmingham Church Bombing'
Another sister of Addie Mae Collins, 16-year-old Junie Collins, would later recall that shortly before the explosion, she had been sitting in the basement of the church reading the Bible and had observed Addie Mae Collins tying the dress sash of Carol Denise McNair before she returned upstairs to the ground floor of the church.
Although the Federal Bureau of Investigation had concluded in 1965 that the bombing had been committed by four known KKK members and segregationists: Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., Herman Frank Cash, Robert Edward Chambliss, and Bobby Frank Cherry, no prosecutions were conducted until 1977, when Robert Chambliss was tried by Attorney General of Alabama Bill Baxley and convicted of the first-degree murder of one of the victims, 11-year-old Carol Denise McNair.
As part of a revival effort by states and the federal government to prosecute cold cases from the civil rights era, the state placed both Blanton Jr. and Cherry on trial, who were each convicted of four counts of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2001 and 2002, respectively.
Video: 'MLK's 1963 eulogy after the Birmingham church bombing'
Future United States Senator Doug Jones successfully prosecuted Blanton and Cherry.
Herman Cash died in 1994, and was never charged with his alleged involvement in the bombing.
The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing marked a turning point in the United States during the civil rights movement and also contributed to support for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by Congress.
