Racism In The Secret Life Of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd alludes to a church bombing in The Secret Life of Bees to provide perspective on racists of the time period, who damaged the symbolic image of a church in Birmingham, Alabama. Within the novel, Lily discovers a wall with various slips of paper inside. Referring to the church bombing in Birmingham, one piece reads, “I looked in the direction of the wall, invisible now in the darkness. Birmingham, Sept 15, four little angels dead” (98). To illustrate, the event that the slip of paper refers to was a church bombing in 1963, where “four little angels,” which were actually black schoolgirls, died. The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham stood as a symbol of both safety and hope. When the racists bombed the church, they also damaged