At 10:22 on the morning of September 15, 1963, an explosion ripped through the lower floor of the 16th Street Baptist Church. The bomb tossed parked cars across the street and scattered rubble for an entire block, but as the smoke dissipated, the heaviest cost became clear. Four young girls —Carol Robertson, Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, and Cynthia Wesley—were killed in the blast. The children were the first bomb-related fatalities in a city that had witnessed nearly fifty other incidents stretching back to the 1950s. Days before the church bombing, the FBI announced that it would investigate explosions at the homes of attorney Arthur Shores and Rev. A. D. King, both outspoken African Americans, as well as an attack on the A. G. Gaston Motel, owned by one of “Bombingham’s” most prominent black businessmen. Confronted with a wave of violence, the Birmingham City Council called for the creation of a “bombing fund” to help victims and obtain convictions; even Gov. George Wallace, on record implying that the bombs were set by civil rights activists looking for attention, contributed to the $57,000 raised by mid-September.
Becoming Alabama:
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