This Week, in 1963

[digitS']

Four girls were killed by the explosion of 15 sticks of dynamite at the 16th Avenue Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama.

Years later, one of the perpetrators of the bombing was tried and convicted of the first degree murder of 11 year-old Carol Denise McNair. She was changing into her choir robe when the bomb exploded.

I was a child in 1963 but Carole Denise was younger and this tragic event saddened me, a kid on the opposite side of the United States. I hadn't sorted out the civil rights movement in my own mind. I was sure that Carole Denise hadn't either.

Steve

 

[so lucky]

It's sad and frightening that we haven't moved in a more universally positive direction in these past 53 years.
I lived in such a racially isolated area when I was a kid, I was barely aware of this event when it happened. I don't know whether my parents chose to keep us kids in the dark, or they simply didn't grasp the significance of it.

 

[Rhodie Ranch]

We lived in Montgomery AL two times...one was in 1961 for my second round of first grade (moved from England where kids started much earlier) and then again in 1967 for seventh grade. I remember alot the second time around. They had moved from George Wallace to his wife, Lurleen (sp?) Wallace as the Gov. There was alot of racial tension and even tho I was fairly encapsulated in the mostly white school, there were instances that I remember in downtown Montgomery that were shocking.

 

[digitS']

I was a teenager and, I suppose, ready to resist the teachings I had grown up with.

The bomb-damaged bodies of young children was not what I expected to see carried from a church.

I didn't find answers in church to my confusion nor support for the sadness I felt for what was going on in the country. I resented the silence and stopped attending that year and it would be nearly 5 years before I returned, to a different denomination.

Steve