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September 16, 2013

4 Girls Remembered on 50th Anniversary of Birmingham Bombings 
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Sunday marked the 50th anniversary of the bombing of the Sixteenth
Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, a watershed moment in the
civil rights movement. On Sept. 15, 1963, a dynamite blast killed four
young girls in the church –- Denise Mc Nair, age 11, and Carole
Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Addie Mae Collins, all 14 years old. Three
days later, at a funeral for three of the girls, Dr. Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr. honored them as "martyred heroines."

Martin Luther King. Jr.: "These children—unoffending, innocent, and
beautiful—were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic
crimes ever perpetrated against humanity. And yet they died nobly. They
are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human
dignity."

 

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