"BIRMINGHAM SUNDAY"

 “BIRMINGHAM SUNDAY”

Sixty years ago, I was a senior in high school in the fall of 1963, and I had listened to MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington on August 28.  That speech and that March had moved the dial a little bit for me.  I was not converted yet from my captivity to white supremacy and its interpretation of life, but that day had opened the window just a tad.  I was beginning to think that there was more to the story of race and white superiority, which I had been taught from infancy, and which I believed.

Almost 3 weeks later came the white supremacist answer to the March on Washington, to the Birmingham campaign in the spring, and to the growing calls from the civil rights movement to put the idea of equality back on to the map of American history and landscape.  On Sunday, September 15, 1963, many Black families in Birmingham headed to church, including Pastor John Cross and his family at Sixteenth Avenue Baptist.  They were not aware that a splinter group of the KKK had planted 19 sticks of dynamite underneath the stairs on the east side of the church, wired to a timer set to go off on Sunday morning.  

At 10:22 AM on Sunday, September 15, the dynamite went off, injuring over 20 people and killing 4 young Black girls getting ready for worship:  Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair.  It was a heinous act, designed to terrorize the Black people who led the civil rights movement in Birmingham.  Sixteenth Street Church was a hub of that movement, and later I would meet Reverend Cross in our work at Oakhurst Presbyterian.  He was a member of nearby Oakhurst Baptist, and his wife, Mrs. Cross, was a leader at the Girls Club, housed at our church.  He had many stories to tell of that fateful day and of the cost that the bombing extracted in his heart and in the hearts of many others.  Filled with grief and anger, they remained determined to be witnesses to the necessity of moving towards the great uncashed check of equality in American history.  Rhiannon Giddens recorded  a very moving song about this time – a song called “Birmingham Sunday,” written by Richard Farina.  Here’s a link to it: 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_T5KlTpvoM

The four cowards were white men named  Thomas Edwin Blanton, Herman Frank Cash, Robert Edward Chambliss, and Bobby Frank Cherry.  The FBI investigated the bombing, and they determined the identities of the men who did the bombing.  But FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover would never allow them to be prosecuted, and the case was closed.  The first one prosecuted was Chambliss in 1977.  Alabama Attorney General William Baxley had reopened the case in 1971 and led the prosecution.  Chambliss was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 1985.  Blanton and Cherry were later convicted in 2001 and 2002 and died in prison.  In his closing argument, prosecuting attorney and future U.S. Senator Doug Jones said that although the trial was conducted 38 years after the bombing, it was no less important, adding: "It's never too late for the truth to be told ... It's never too late for a man to be held accountable for his crimes." The fourth coward, Herman Cash died before the cases were ever reopened.  

I remember hearing about the Birmingham Sunday bombing soon after it happened in 1963, and I had a split reaction to it.  I was horrified at the violence, at the violation of a church itself, and by the cowards who did it.  Yet, I also felt that if Black people would only leave things alone and let equality come gradually to the South, then heinous acts like this would not happen.  I could understand the horrible loss of life, but I was still held in deep captivity to the power of white supremacy.  Since the people who died were children in church, I could not say that they deserved it, but I did feel like Black people had brought this upon themselves.  I had a long way to go until I could find my true center, not as a racist, white supremacist but as a child of God, called to live and fight for equality and equal dignity for all, no matter one’s racial or gender or economic classification.

We are now in a time when white supremacy is regaining strength – in some states, this history about Birmingham Sunday would not be allowed to be taught in schools.  Racial violence is growing, and Trumpism is calling forth the spirits of the cowards who slinked into Sixteenth Street Baptist Church to plant the explosives.  Don’t recall their names – recall Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Denise McNair.  Don’t be of a split mind like I was in 1963.  Find your place to work for justice and equality.  Pray about the craziness in which we now find ourselves – and practice what you pray.