This article was written a nd post a couple of days ago by Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner:
September 15, 1963 — 60 years ago today. An act of murderous cowardice in Birmingham, Alabama, shocked a nation. A bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church placed by Klansmen killed four girls as they attended Sunday school. Many others were wounded.
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would say in eulogy, “These children — unoffending, innocent, and beautiful — were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity.”
Let us pause in remembrance. Please say their names aloud. They deserve our recognition:
Denise McNair, age 11.
Carole Robertson, 14.
Addie Mae Collins, 14.
Cynthia Wesley, 14.
This horrific act is not ancient history. Some of you were of memory age at the time it happened. And it was not an isolated act of violence. Rather, it was part of a bloody, tragic, and unjust campaign of terror that stretches from before our country’s birth into our present age. It is a story of murder, torture, rape, lynching, and the tearing apart of families. It is a story of Jim Crow, redlining, and voter suppression. And now it is a story that powerful forces in our country would like us to forget, or at least sanitize from the unadulterated truth.
And yet, throughout our history, bigotry has not gone unanswered. Women and men of courage and fortitude have reminded us that we should walk a path toward equality and justice. Many have sacrificed greatly in service to our nation’s highest ideals.
This bombing was an act of domestic terrorism meant to stifle a growing Civil Rights Movement. It had the opposite effect. Less than a year later, President Lyndon Johnson signed the groundbreaking Civil Rights Act.
Progress has been made. However, we are reminded in our current age that the forces of white supremacy will never give up their privilege without a fight. We see more acts of racist violence, more denying of reality, more attempts to rewrite history. It is a cynically destructive ploy for power at the expense of our national unity and the truth.
All this was on the mind of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson this morning, when the first Black woman to serve on the court went to the 16th Street Baptist Church to commemorate the bombing’s anniversary. It was the justice’s first trip to Alabama, but she told those in the pews, “I felt in my spirit that I had to come.”
What she subsequently shared was an acknowledgement of the past and an admonition for our present and our future. We were moved by her words and want to include some of them here, as well as a video of the entire speech, should you wish to watch.
Justice Jackson began by contrasting the story of the Birmingham bombing and her own personal journey.
I come with the understanding that I didn’t reach these professional heights on my own, that people of all races and faiths, people of courage and conviction, cleared the path for me in the wake of the horrible tragedy that snuffed out the too-brief lives of those four little girls inside this sacred space.
I’ve come to Alabama with a heart filled with gratitude, for unlike those four little girls, I have lived and have been entrusted with the solemn responsibility of serving our great nation, a service that I hope will inspire people. And especially young people to think about what is possible.
Justice Jackson later entered what she called the “warning part of my message.”
What is needed is for all of us to pay careful attention to what we know. Oppressors of every stripe, from the slavemaster to the dictator, have recognized for centuries that knowledge is a powerful tool. They have seen that, once acquired, it can be wielded. And once wielded, it is transformative. Knowledge emboldens people, and it frees them. The work of our time is maintaining that hard-won freedom. And to do that, we are going to need the truth, the whole truth about our past.
We must teach it to our children and preserve it for theirs. In other words, my parents were right all along. As I explained at the outset, during my time as a youngster, my parents taught me lots of uplifting things about places like Birmingham, and Montgomery, and Selma. The marches and the meetings, the sense of empowerment from belonging to a community in action...
But my parents also taught me about the darker moments of the times — the dogs, the fire hoses, the bombs. There was a reason my parents felt it was important to introduce me to those uncomfortable topics. It was not to make me feel like a victim or crush my spirits. To the contrary, my parents understood that I had to know those hard truths in order to expand my horizons.
They understood that we can only know where we are, and where we’re going, if we realize where we’ve been.
Knowledge of the past is what enables us to mark our forward progress. If we are going to continue to move forward as a nation, we cannot allow concerns about discomfort to displace knowledge, truth, or history. It is certainly the case that parts of this country’s story can be hard to think about. I know that atrocities like the one we are memorializing today are difficult to remember and relive. But I also know that it is dangerous to forget them.
We cannot forget, because the uncomfortable lessons are often the ones that teach us the most about ourselves. We cannot forget, because we cannot learn from past mistakes we do not know exist...
So yes, learning about our country’s history can be painful. But history is also our best teacher. Yes, our past is filled with too much violence, too much hatred, too much prejudice, but can we really say that we are not confronting those same evils now?
We have to own even the darkest parts of our past, understand them, and vow never to repeat them. We must not shield our eyes. We must not shrink away, lest we lose it all. The path we need to take, one of remembrance, knowledge, and understanding, is certainly not the easy road, but it is the only one that can guarantee our democracy’s ultimate survival.
And I am confident that, just like generations of Americans before us, we are up to the challenge. Armed with our history, well-prepared by our past, and secure in the knowledge of what we have been through and where we’re headed, we will triumph in the valiant struggle to promote constitutional values and to obtain freedom and justice for all.
Rev. George Lee, one of the first black people registered to vote in Humphreys County, used his pulpit and his printing press to urge others to vote. White officials offered Lee protection on the condition he end his voter registration efforts, but Lee refused and was murdered.
Lamar Smith was shot dead on the courthouse lawn by a white man in broad daylight while dozens of people watched. The killer was never indicted because no one would admit they saw a white man shoot a black man. Smith had organized blacks to vote in a recent election.
Emmett Louis Till, a 14-year-old boy on vacation from Chicago, reportedly flirted with a white woman in a store. Three nights later, two men took Till from his bed, beat him, shot him and dumped his body in the Tallahatchie River. An all-white jury found the men innocent of murder.
Willie Edwards Jr., a truck driver, was on his way to work when he was stopped by four Klansmen. The men mistook Edwards for another man who they believed was dating a white woman. They forced Edwards at gunpoint to jump off a bridge into the Alabama River. Edwards’ body was found three months later.
Mack Charles Parker, 23, was accused of raping a white woman. Three days before his case was set for trial, a masked mob took him from his jail cell, beat him, shot him and threw him in the Pearl River.
Herbert Lee, who worked with civil rights leader Bob Moses to help register black voters, was killed by a state legislator who claimed self-defense and was never arrested. Louis Allen, a black man who witnessed the murder, was later also killed.
Cpl. Roman Ducksworth Jr., a military police officer stationed in Maryland, was on leave to visit his sick wife when he was ordered off a bus by a police officer and shot dead. The police officer may have mistaken Ducksworth for a “freedom rider” who was testing bus desegregation laws.
Paul Guihard, a reporter for a French news service, was killed by gunfire from a white mob during protests over the admission of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi.
William Lewis Moore, a postman from Baltimore, was shot and killed during a one-man march against segregation. Moore had planned to deliver a letter to the governor of Mississippi urging an end to intolerance.
Medgar Evers, who directed NAACP operations in Mississippi, was leading a campaign for integration in Jackson when he was shot and killed by a sniper at his home.
Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley were getting ready for church services when a bomb exploded at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing all four of the school-age girls. The church had been a center for civil rights meetings and marches.
Virgil Lamar Ware, 13, was riding on the handlebars of his brother’s bicycle when he was fatally shot by white teenagers. The white youths had come from a segregationist rally held in the aftermath of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing.
Louis Allen, who witnessed the murder of civil rights worker Herbert Lee, endured years of threats, jailings and harassment. He was making final arrangements to move north on the day he was killed.
Rev. Bruce Klunder was among civil rights activists who protested the building of a segregated school by placing their bodies in the way of construction equipment. Klunder was crushed to death when a bulldozer backed over him.
Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore were killed by Klansmen who believed the two were part of a plot to arm blacks in the area. (There was no such plot.) Their bodies were found during a massive search for the missing civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner.
James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Henry Schwerner, young civil rights workers, were arrested by a deputy sheriff and then released into the hands of Klansmen who had plotted their murders. They were shot, and their bodies were buried in an earthen dam.
Lt. Col. Lemuel Penn, a Washington, D.C., educator, was driving home from U.S. Army Reserves training when he was shot and killed by Klansmen in a passing car.
Jimmie Lee Jackson was beaten and shot by state troopers as he tried to protect his grandfather and mother from a trooper attack on civil rights marchers. His death led to the Selma-Montgomery march and the eventual passage of the Voting Rights Act.
Rev. James Reeb, a Unitarian minister from Boston, was among many white clergymen who joined the Selma marchers after the attack by state troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Reeb was beaten to death by white men while he walked down a Selma street.
Viola Gregg Liuzzo, a housewife and mother from Detroit, drove alone to Alabama to help with the Selma march after seeing televised reports of the attack at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. She was driving marchers back to Selma from Montgomery when she was shot and killed by a Klansmen in a passing car.
Oneal Moore was one of two black deputies hired by white officials in an attempt to appease civil rights demands. Moore and his partner, Creed Rogers, were on patrol when they were blasted with gunfire from a passing car. Moore was killed and Rogers was wounded.
Willie Brewster was on his way home from work when he was shot and killed by white men. The men belonged to the National States Rights Party, a violent neo-Nazi group whose members had been involved in church bombings and murders of blacks.
Jonathan Myrick Daniels, an Episcopal Seminary student in Boston, had come to Alabama to help with black voter registration in Lowndes County. He was arrested at a demonstration, jailed in Hayneville and then suddenly released. Moments after his release, he was shot to death by a deputy sheriff.
Samuel Leamon Younge Jr., a student civil rights activist, was fatally shot by a white gas station owner following an argument over segregated restrooms.
Vernon Ferdinand Dahmer, a wealthy businessman, offered to pay poll taxes for those who couldn’t afford the fee required to vote. The night after a radio station broadcasted Dahmer’s offer, his home was firebombed. Dahmer died later from severe burns.
Ben Chester White, who had worked most of his life as a caretaker on a plantation, had no involvement in civil rights work. He was murdered by Klansmen who thought they could divert attention from a civil rights march by killing a black person.
Wharlest Jackson, the treasurer of his local NAACP chapter, was one of many blacks who received threatening Klan notices at his job. After Jackson was promoted to a position previously reserved for whites, a bomb was planted in his car. It exploded minutes after he left work one day, killing him instantly.
Benjamin Brown, a former civil rights organizer, was watching a student protest from the sidelines when he was hit by stray gunshots from police who fired into the crowd.
Samuel Ephesians Hammond Jr., Delano Herman Middleton and Henry Ezekial Smith were shot and killed by police who fired on student demonstrators at the South Carolina State College campus.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister, was a major architect of the Civil Rights Movement. He led and inspired major non-violent desegregation campaigns, including those in Montgomery and Birmingham. He won the Nobel peace prize. He was assassinated as he prepared to lead a demonstration in Memphis.