This year marks the 60th anniversary of several major events in the Civil Rights Movement — like the August 1963 March on Washington.
But weeks later, the movement was also marked by racial terror when four young Black girls were killed.
Communities across the South, and the country, are remembering what happened on Sept. 15, 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama. A bomb — planted by the Ku Klux Klan — exploded at a church killing Addie Mae Collins, 14, Carol McNair, 11, Carole Robertson, 14, and Cynthia Wesley, 14.
The Greater Birmingham Convention and Visitors Bureau is commemorating the year with a 60th Anniversary Civil Rights tour bus. On one side of the bus is a large photo of activist preachers Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy and Fred Shuttlesworth. On the other side is a picture of a bronze statue of the Four Angel Spirits, remembering the "Four Little Girls."
On a hot August day, I traveled the city on that bus with a group of Black journalists from across the country. The first stop was the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Our guide for the day was Brenda Spencer Gaston Wright, who was born and raised in Birmingham.
The 78-year-old Wright lived through the marches and the murders. The "Four Little Girls" who died in the bombing at 16th Street Baptist Church were just a few years younger than Wright. When we walked through the museum and institute, I asked if she was sad, mad, proud?
“All of the above, all of the above,” said Wright. “It is sad because of what’s occurring now in 2023. It’s really sad.”
Wright says she feels racial tensions, segregation in education and police brutality towards Blacks are just as high today as back then.
To keep us in the Civil Rights mood, only songs from the 1960s played over the sound system in the tour bus. The 1964 hit, “Every Little Bit Hurts” by Brenda Holloway, created a calm over the bus.
Before visiting and touring the famous 16th Street Baptist church, we stopped by the offices of the Civil Rights Activist Committee Headquarters. This is where the “foot soldiers” still meet, decades after leading marches through downtown Birmingham, for civil rights and to end segregation.
This stop was most memorable. This is where we met Sarah Collins Rudolph, known as the “Fifth Little Girl.”
“All I could do was holler. Jesus! Addie, Addie, Addie! But she didn’t answer,” said Rudolph.
Rudolph was at church early that fateful morning when her sister, Addie Mae Collins, and the three others were killed. Rudolph lost an eye as a result of the blast.
“So, they rushed me on upstairs to operate on my eyes. When I came back to my room, my mother was in the room waiting. She told me, all the girls in the lounge with me, they were all killed," Wright said. "And I was the only survivor."
Freddie Parker is a History Professor Emeritus at North Carolina Central University. He remembers when that deadly bomb shook Birmingham. Parker was 10 years old and living in Hillsborough.
“By then my father was actively involved in the civil rights movement," Parker said. "So, I was too."
In 1968, Parker and his classmates marched for the right to integrate the new Orange High School.
Parker and others will gather in Hillsborough at the Passmore Center to remember the “Four Little Girls” and talk about the importance of youth activism. There will be a screening of the film, “Mighty Times, The Children’s March.” It features the lives of Black Birmingham high school students who skipped school in 1963 to march in the Civil Rights Movement.
Derrick Davis is a graduate student at NCCU. This summer, he was Director of the James Cates Scholars. Cates was a victim of racial violence, killed on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill in 1970.
“I remember learning about the Four Little Girls while reading a book in my mother’s personal library,” Davis said. “I liked math more than reading but I loved ‘The Watsons go to Birmingham.”
Davis says he hopes to ignite passion in young adults to learn their history and bridge the gap to activism while also helping to close the Black-White achievement gap.
Sunday, Davis and others will remember the “Four Little Girls” at the Hargraves Center in Chapel Hill, through music and spoken word.
- Sept.15, 2023 — “We Could Have Been…The 60 Year Remembrance of Four Little Girls.” Passmore Center, Hillsborough, N.C. | 6 to 8 p.m. | Sponsored by Spirit Freedom, The Local History Stewards and The James Cates Scholars
- Sept. 15, 2023 — The film screening of Spike Lee’s “Four Little Girls.” Binkley Baptist Church, Chapel Hill, N.C. | 6:30 p.m. | Sponsored by OCCRC and Chapel Hill/Carrboro NAACP Youth Council
- Sept. 17, 2023 – Honoring “Four Little Girls” through music and spoke word. Hargraves Community Center, Chapel Hill, N.C. | 3 to 5 p.m. | Sponsored by Spirit Freedom, The Local History Stewards and The James Cates Scholars
