By the time she was 11, Denise McNair had organized several informal, neighborhood fundraisers, convincing her playmates to dance, act and read poetry to collect money for muscular dystrophy.
Carole Robertson, at 14, was a Girl Scout and straight-A student who studied tap, ballet and modern jazz. Addie Mae Collins, also 14, spent her free time singing in the church choir and helping her family’s financial situation, going door-to-door each day after school to sell her mother’s homemade goods.
Cynthia Wesley often invited her friends to parties in her backyard, where she showed off the latest licks she had learned on her clarinet. Characterized by her petite frame, she was never seen without her favorite possession, a hand-me-down class ring from 1954.
And, just like they did every Sunday, all four attended church at Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963. That morning, a bomb planted by cowards and killers would destroy much of the church, injure dozens of people and take the lives of Denise, Carole, Cynthia and Addie Mae.
Not much different from millions of other young, American girls – carefree and wistful, looking forward to a future of happier times – these four were tragically and eternally linked by a collision of circumstances. In the process, they became more than just four little girls; they were transformed into symbols, larger-than-life reminders of what the worst face of humanity could be capable of doing.
The fatal explosion was actually the fourth bombing incident in Birmingham in less than a month’s time. The city had reached a boiling point when National Guardsmen arrived to finally ensure the long-delayed desegregation of Birmingham’s schools.
Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of this tragedy, one of our darkest hours as a nation. Three days of memorials and forward-looking services are scheduled at the church, now host to nearly 80,000 visitors each year.
Looking back on such an avoidable catastrophe can serve us well, but only if we do not fail to realize that elements of hatred and intolerance exist in America and the world of 2003, just as they did forty years ago. We should not, however, simply look back and mourn, but instead let reminders of injustice motivate us to continue a process of progress, a continual quest as a people and a nation to erase such acts from the landscape of humanity.
It was this quest that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of in his eulogy for three of the girls killed in the blast. His timeless words can serve as a guidepost even today, in a world when black and white, Muslim and Christian, rich and poor and countless other needless divisions still define too much of who we are.
We should all remember Addie Mae, Cynthia, Denise and Caroline, and we should all remember Dr. King’s words:
“They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. And so in a real sense they have something to say to each of us in their death…They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream.”