250 to 250: 49. 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, Narrated by Senator Doug Jones

Heather Cox Richardson and 250 to 250: 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, Narrated by Senator Doug Jones

Senator Doug Jones is a prominent attorney and public servant who became the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from Alabama in 25 years and is currently the state's Democratic nominee for Governor. Jones, who prosecuted the case decades later, remembers the four young girls killed in the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, a tragedy that galvanized support for the Civil Rights Act.

On September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded at the 16th Street Baptist Church.

• The church was in Birmingham, Alabama.
• Four African American girls were killed.
• Their names were Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Denise McNair.
• Just a few days earlier, Black children had started attending formerly all-white schools.
• Some white supremacists opposed school integration.
• Members of the Ku Klux Klan planted the bomb.
• The bombing shocked people across the United States.

Many Americans supported stronger civil rights laws after the attack.

• In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• Justice was delayed, but not denied.
• Years later, three former Ku Klux Klan members were convicted of the bombing.
• The tragedy became an important moment in the fight for civil rights and justice.

POP Interview and Civics Quiz:

• N-400 Part 9:07e. Have you EVER ordered, incited, called for, committed, assisted, helped with, or otherwise participated in causing harm or suffering to any person because of their race, religion, national origin, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion?
• USCIS 100:84.   What movement tried to end racial discrimination?
• USCIS 128:112. What did the civil rights movement do?

Family Fun

• Civil Rights Digital Library: Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing Collection
• Gilder Lehrman Institute: Bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, 1963
• NMAAHC: America Sees the Truth
• NPS: Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument |  The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 (Voices from the Field / series)  | Junior Ranger book | 16th Street Baptist Church bombing (1963) 
• Spike Lee: 4 Little Girls trailer | video (stream on HBO or borrow the DVD on the library)
• Wikipedia: Timeline of the 1954-1968 civil rights movement
• Zinn Project: Sept. 15, 1963: 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing