50 Year Anniversary of the Church Bombing!

Photo by Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images  

Robert Chambliss - Burton Mcneely/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

The Four Innocents- AP Photo/The Birmingham News

On Sunday, Sept. 15, 1963, in Birmingham, Ala., at 10:22 a.m., a bomb exploded at the 16th Street Baptist Church. Of the nearly 200 congregants inside, attending Sunday school classes and preparing for the 11 a.m. service, about 22 were injured. But perhaps most notably, four little innocent girls -- three 14-year-olds and one 11-year-old -- were killed, putting the bombing among the most well-known and most heartbreaking tragedies in the fight for civil rights in America's Deep South.  At what cost is hatred and bigotry?  Even now the question remains are black lives less valuable than others?  And from whose perspective?  50 years have passed and we still don't know the answers.

In 1963, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley died in a war they didn't fully understand, and died unnecessarily due to hatred.  Three of the four suspects responsible for the bombing were convicted. Two died in prison, Robert Chambliss, BobbyFrank Cherry and ThomasE. Blanton, Jr. is still in prison. In 1977, Robert “Dynamite Bob” Chambliss was convicted of murder or the bombing and sentenced to life terms of imprisonment.  He died in 1985.

Not more than seven hours after the bombing, two more people died, a sixteen year old and a thirteen year old.  They were shot by the police.  Young lives who have just begun to live. William Faulkner had it right: in the south, he once wrote, "the past is never dead. It isn't even past."