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Six
Dead After Church Bombing
Blast Kills
Four Children; Riots Follow
Two Youths Slain; State Reinforces Birmingham Police
United Press International
September 16, 1963
Birmingham, Sept. 15—A bomb hurled from a
passing car blasted a crowded Negro church today, killing four
girls in their Sunday school classes and triggering outbreaks of
violence that left two more persons dead in the streets. Two Negro youths were killed in outbreaks of
shooting seven hours after the 16th Street Baptist Church was
bombed, and a third was wounded. As darkness closed over the city hours later,
shots crackled sporadically in the Negro sections. Stones
smashed into cars driven by whites.
Five Fires Reported
Police reported at least five fires in Negro
business establishments tonight. A official said some are being
set, including one at a mop factory touched off by gasoline
thrown on the building. The fires were brought under control and
there were no injuries. Meanwhile, NAACP Executive Secretary Roy
Wilkins wired President Kennedy that unless the Federal
Government offers more than "picayune and piecemeal aid
against this type of bestiality" Negroes will "employ
such methods as our desperation may dictate in defense of the
lives of our people."
Reinforced police units patrolled the city
and 500 battle-dressed National Guardsmen stood by at an armory. City police shot a 16-year-old Negro to death
when he refused to heed their commands to halt after they caught
him stoning cars. A 13-year-old Negro boy was shot and killed as
he rode his bicycle in a suburban area north of the city.
Police Battle Crowd
Downtown streets were deserted after dark and
police urged white and Negro parents to keep their children off
the streets. Thousands of hysterical Negroes poured into
the area around the church this morning and police fought for
two hours, firing rifles into the air to control them. When the crowd broke up, scattered shootings
and stonings erupted through the city during the afternoon and
tonight. The Negro youth killed by police was Johnny
Robinson, 16. They said he fled down an alley when they caught
him stoning cars. They shot him when he refused to halt.
The 13-year-old boy killed outside the city
was Virgil Ware. He was shot at about the same time as Robinson. Shortly after the bombing police broke up a
rally of white students protesting the desegregation of three
Birmingham schools last week. A motorcade of militant adult
segregationists apparently en route to the student rally was
disbanded.
Police patrols, augmented by 300 State
troopers sent into the city by Gov. George C. Wallace, quickly
broke up all gatherings of white and Negroes. Wallace sent the
troopers and ordered 500 National Guardsmen to stand by at
Birmingham armories. King arrived in the city tonight and went
into a conference with
Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a leader in the
civil rights fight in Birmingham. The City Council held an emergency meeting to
discuss safety measures for the city, but rejected proposals for
a curfew.
Dozens of persons were injured when the bomb
went off in the church, which held 400 Negroes at the time,
including 80 children. It was Young Day at the church. A few hours later, police picked up two white
men, questioned them about the bombing and released them. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wired
President Kennedy from Atlanta that he was going to Birmingham
to plead with Negroes to "remain non-violent."
But he said that unless "immediate
Federal steps are taken" there will be "in Birmingham
and Alabama the worst racial holocaust this Nation has ever
seen." Dozens of survivors, their faces dripping
blood from the glass that flew out of the church's stained glass
windows, staggered around the building in a cloud of white dust
raised by the explosion. The blast crushed two nearby cars like
toys and blew out windows blocks away. Negroes stoned cars in other sections of
Birmingham and police exchanged shots with a Negro firing wild
shotgun blasts two blocks from the church. It took officers two
hours to disperse the screaming, surging crowd of 2,000 Negroes
who ran to the church at the sound of the blast.
At least 20 persons were hurt badly enough by
the blast to be treated at hospitals. Many more, cut and bruised
by flying debris, were treated privately. (The Associated Press reported that among the
injured in subsequent shooting were a white man injured by a
Negro. Another white man was wounded by a Negro who attempted to
rob him, according to police.) Mayor Albert Boutwell, tears streaming down
his cheeks, announced the city had asked for help.
"It is a tragic event," Boutwell
said. "It is just sickening that a few individuals could
commit such a horrible atrocity. The occurrence of such a thing
has so gravely concerned the public..." His voice broke and
he could not go on. Boutwell and Police Chief Jamie Moore
requested the State assistance in a telegram to Wallace. "While the situation appears to be well
under control of federal law enforcement officers at this time,
the possibility of further trouble exists," Boutwell and
Moore said in their telegram.
President Kennedy, yachting off Newport,
R.I., was notified by radio-telephone and Attorney General
Robert F. Kennedy ordered his chief civil rights troubleshooter,
Burke Marshall, to Birmingham. At least 25 FBI agents, including
bomb experts from Washington, were being rushed in. City Police Inspector W.J. Haley said as many
as 15 sticks of dynamite must have been used. "We have talked to witnesses who say
they saw a car drive by and then speed away just before the bomb
hit," he said.
In Montgomery, Wallace said he had a similar
report and said the descriptions of the car's occupants did not
make clear their race. But he served notice "on those
responsible that every law enforcement agency of this State will
be used to apprehend them." The bombing was the 21st in Birmingham in
eight years, and the first to kill. None of the bombings have
been solved.
As police struggled to hold back the crowd,
the blasted church's pastor, the Rev. John H. Cross, grabbed a
megaphone and walked back and forth, telling the crowd:
"The police are doing everything they can. Please go
home." "The Lord is our shepherd," he
sobbed. "We shall not want."
The only stained glass window in the church
that remained in its frame showed Christ leading a group of
little children. The face of Christ was blown out. After the police dispersed the hysterical
crowds, workmen with pickaxes went into the wrecked basement of
the church. Parts of brightly painted children's furniture were
strewn about in one Sunday School room, and blood stained the
floors. Chunks of concrete the size of footballs littered the
basement.
The bomb apparently went off in an unoccupied
basement room and blew down the wall, sending stone and debris
flying like shrapnel into a room where children were assembling
for closing prayers following Sunday School. Bibles and song
books lay shredded and scattered through the church. In the main sanctuary upstairs, which holds
about 500 persons, the pulpit and Bible were covered with pieces
of stained glass.
One of the dead girls was decapitated. The
coroner's office identified the dead as Denise McNair, 11; Carol
Robertson, 14; Cynthia Wesley, 14, and Addie Mae Collins, 10. As the crowd came outside watched the victims
being carried out, one youth broke away and tried to touch one
of the blanket-covered forms. "This is my sister," he cried.
"My God, she's dead." Police took the hysterical boy
away.
Mamie Grier, superintendent of the Sunday
School, said when the bomb went off "people began
screaming, almost stampeding" to get outside. The wounded
walked around in a daze, she said. One of the injured taken to a hospital was a
white man. Many others cut by flying glass and other debris were
not treated at hospitals.
Fourth in Four Weeks
It was the fourth bombing in four weeks in
Birmingham, and the third since the current school desegregation
crisis came to a boil Sept. 4. Desegregation of schools in Birmingham,
Mobile, and Tuskegee was finally brought about last Wednesday
when President Kennedy federalized the National Guard. Some of
the Guardsmen in Birmingham are still under Federal orders.
Wallace said the ones he alerted today were units of the Guard
"not now federalized." The City of Birmingham has offered a $52,000
reward for the arrest of the bombers, and Wallace today offered
another $5,000.
Dr. King Berates Wallace
But Dr. King wired Wallace that "the blood of four
little children ... is on your hands. Your irresponsible and
misguided actions have created in Birmingham and Alabama the
atmosphere that has induced continued violence and now
murder."* * *
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John Coltrane,
"Alabama" / Kalamu ya
Salaam, "Alabama" /
A Love Supreme
A Blues for the Birmingham Four
/ Eulogy for the Young Victims
/ Six Dead After Church Bombing
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Audio:
My Story, My Song (Featuring blues guitarist Walter Wolfman Washington)
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 |
Panel on Literary Criticism
26 March 2010
National Black Writers Conference
Patrick Oliver, Kalamu ya Salaam,
Dorothea Smartt, Frank Wilderson discuss
the use of literature to promote
political causes and instigate change
and transformation. The event is at the
Medgar Evers College at the City
University of New York.
C-Span Archives
Panel on Politics and Satire
26 March 2010
National Black Writers Conference
Herb Boyd, Thomas Bradshaw, Charles
Edison and Major Owens discuss how
current events are reflected in the
writings of African Americans. The
event is at the Medgar Evers College at
the City University of New York.
C-Span Archives |
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updated 1
November 2007 |
