Sixty years later, a remembrance ceremony will take place in the church. The Supreme Court justice appointed by Joe Biden, Ketanji Brown Jackson, is scheduled to deliver a speech there. A look back at this significant date in American history.
It is one of the most famous racist crimes of the civil rights era in the United States, of which Nina Simone made a song and Spike Lee a documentary: the attack by the Ku Klux Klan against a church in Birmingham, in Alabama, in the slave-holding south of the country, on September 15, 1963. Four girls aged 11 and 14 were killed. The last of the perpetrators sentenced to life in prison died in cell in 2020. 60 years later, a ceremony took place on Friday, September 15, in the Baptist Church on 16th Street. The Supreme Court justice appointed by Joe Biden, Ketanji Brown Jackson, is scheduled to deliver a speech there.
In 1963, Birmingham was nicknamed “Bombingham”, as Klu Klux Klan bombings were so frequent there. African-Americans opposed the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, who clearly displayed his opinions during his inauguration speech in January 1963: “I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
In May, the Ku Klux Klan detonated a device at the home of Martin Luther King’s brother. The repression of the Birmingham Campaign by civil rights activists led President John Fitzgerald Kennedy to give a television speech in June 1963 where he called on members of Congress to pass a law guaranteeing the exercise of civil rights. civic rights for everyone, regardless of their skin color.
On September 15, four members of the Ku Klux Klan hid sticks of dynamite under the girls’ bathroom at the city’s largest black church. At 10:22 a.m., four girls aged 11 to 14 died in the explosion.
Sarah Collins’ older sister Rudolph was among the four victims. Ten years ago, she remembered on public radio NPR. “There I was, standing there bleeding. Someone picked me up and took me to an ambulance. I’m still shaking. Just looking in the mirror and seeing the scars on my face , I remember it every day.”
Martin Luther King spoke of a turning point during his funeral eulogy delivered a few days later: “The innocent blood of these little girls could be a redemptive force that brings life back to this dark city.”
The law which ended segregation was promulgated ten months later, on July 2, 1964. The last of the terrorists, sentenced to life in prison in the early 2000s, died in cells in 2020.
In response to the attack, Nina Simone wrote one of her most famous “protest songs”, Mississippi Goddam. A song written in less than an hour.