Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing Research Paper

In the past couple of weeks instead of talking about the involvement of the adults during the civil rights movement instead the focus has been on the involvement of children and adolescents. Some of the people and events talked about include Emmett Till being beaten to death and shot, the Little Rock Crisis were nine African Americans who are some of the top in their current situation are being protested against to the point of needing military involvement, the children's march were little African American boys and girls miss school to march and end up being attacked by police dogs, and fire hoses, and the sixteenth street baptist church bombing. A story that really hit me emotionally was the sixteenth baptist church bomb that took the life
of three little girls.
Just imagine you are an African American in 1963 your children want to go play in the park or march for a just cause. Of course at the time knowing that your child because they are African American would be the target for the firehoses, the police dogs, guns, and even jail cells your answer would be a clear no. But do not worry Church the one place that should never be targeted the one place where an African American at the time could feel safe is where many parents allow their children to go. So like most you allow your child to go, but what you do not know or expect the little kid walking out in church clothes could be taken away from you and there is nothing that can stop the white men who placed a bomb in the basement of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. For four mothers this is a reality they will soon have to face.
On September 15th 1963, Addie Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Denise McNair were in the basement of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church enjoying life, and preparing for the ceremony that would soon take place.
Little did they know that in the same basement was a bomb set to go off at the same time the ceremony would begin. In the videos watch in class it is learned that the church received a phone call prior to the bomb that seemed like nonsense but would soon be seen as a warning. Three minutes after the call the bomb was detonated and took the lives of four girls and injured another twenty. In the poem Ballad of Birmingham, Dudley Randall writes so it is read as a conversation would sound. The poem starts with a child asking to go march and a mother pretty much saying no you can not do that it is too dangerous after that option is shot down the child argues that it is okay because they will not be alone again the mother says no but this time she offers to let her daughter attend church. In the next two stanza the reader gets a visual of a little African American girl cleaned and groomed dressed to attend church with her mother smiling and willingly letting the daughter go to Church. But just like that Dudley Randall drops a bomb and flips the poem around now instead of smiling and feeling as though her daughter is safe the reader can visualize a mother digging through the rubbage, calling for her daughter, with no answer and the only thing left of that
little girl is a shoe. When reading this the closest thing to seeing an event like this would be the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
On September 11, 2001, some families boarded an airplane with their little son or daughter and were off to their vacation point.
Other parents would be getting ready to drop their child off at daycare before heading to work that day. While sitting in on a plane or pulling away from daycare most would not think it is the last time of seeing that childs face or that a grown adult could take the life from a little body and not have a second thought. However on 9/11/2001 a terrorist attack on the twin towers would take would change all of that. Although the majority of the victims on 9/11 were adults there was still a total of eight children who would never return to school, their home, or friends. On the news after the attack many families desperately tried to make contact with their family and if they knew that their loved one was working in the tower went looking. For some loved ones were found but for even more their loved ones had passed and on that day the world lost eight children. Unlike the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church the ones who killed hundreds of innocent citizens would be caught. Our military went searching for the leader and when they caught Osama bin Laden he was killed. For the mother's of the four girls whose lives were taken the murders would walk free for over twenty years. Some would die before ever being charged. So not only did the mothers of Addie Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Denise McNair lose their daughter but also saw the
murders get to walk away and live out the rest of their lives. In a poem titled Suffer the Children by Audre Lorde he finishes up with the lines “We who love them remember their child’s laughter. But he whose hate robs him of their gold has yet to weep at night about their graves.” This line shows how the death of four innocent girls killed by a bomb while prepare for church has greatly impacted the African American community but the white men who commit the hate crimes against African Americans do not feel the pain and can just continue with their life. For the African Americans the events taken against their children are most likely one nightmare but to have the life of a child taken while at Church is another issue.
The Church was one of the only places African Americans could feel safe and were parents would willingly send their son or daughter. But on September 15, 1963 the lose of Addie Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Denise McNair would add to the movement of the civil rights. Although the civil rights movement is associated mainly with adults taking action the deaths of Emmett Till, Addie Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Denise McNair, the protests done against the nine students at Little Rock, the Children's March, and the peaceful protest but college freshmen at lunch counter, are important moments of the youths involvement in the civil rights movement. Many parents want to protect their child but in these cases whites showed African Americans what exactly they are capable of. And as N.K. Jemisin once said “There is no greater warrior than a mother protecting her child”.