The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing took place on September 15, 1963, a racially-motivated hate crime enacted by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Along with the four girls who were killed in the tragic event, two teen boys, Johnny Robinson and Virgil Ware, were also slain in two separate incidents under violent circumstances.
The 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed by four Klan members during a Sunday service at the church. The white supremacists placed several sticks of dynamite with a timed device underneath a set of steps, killing three 14-year-old girls, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, and Carole Robertson, and 11-year-old Carol Denise McNair.
Separate from the incident, Johnny Robinson was out with friends at a local gas station located near the church when they encountered an angered white mob yelling obscenities and slurs in their direction. “Witnesses” claimed the boys began throwing rocks at the men and shouting at them, prompting police to be called to the scene. Birmingham police officer Jack Parker was in the backseat of a patrol car and gunned down Robinson with a shotgun blast.
For years, Robinson’s siblings endured the pain of their brother’s death and were left without answers or justice as Parker skirted all accountability for his crime due to the nature of the nation at the time. In 2009, Dana Gilis, who at the time headed the FBI’s Civil Rights program in Birmingham, alerted the family that, despite reopening the case, they couldn’t charge anyone with Robinson’s death as Parker died in 1977 of cancer.
Robinson was just 16 at the time.
Virgil Ware was riding in Birmingham with his brother on a bicycle when white teens Larry Joe Sims and Michael Lee Farley were set to attend a white supremacist rally in town that was canceled in the wake of the bombing. Instead, the two 16-year-olds drove around and spotted the Ware brothers. Farley reportedly gave Sims a .22 caliber pistol, aiming at Ware and shooting him in the chest and cheek.
An all-white jury alarmingly convicted the boys of second-degree manslaughter, and they were sentenced to seven months of jail. However, they never served the time and instead were given two years of probation. Years later, both Sims and Farley, weighed by guilt and inspired by stories about their heinous act, apologized to the Ware family, who became involved in the Civil Rights movement.
Ware was 13.
The FBI concluded in 1965 that the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was carried out by Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., Herman Frank Cash, Robert Edward Chambliss, and Bobby Frank Cherry. Chambliss was prosecuted for the crime in 1977 on first-degree murder charges connected to the death of Denise McNair. Blanton Jr. and Cherry did not face justice until the 21st Century, both convicted of four counts of first-degree murder in 2001 and 2022, respectively.
Beyond the victims who lost their lives, 22 individuals survived the blast, including Sarah Collins Rudolph. Rudolph is now a speaker, author, and Civil Rights advocate who has routinely told her version of the events that transformed her life forever. Her survival and bold position against social injustice stand as a symbol of triumph and defiance
Today, the echoes of the church bombing and the deaths of Robinson and Ware still ring loudly in the midst of political and racial tensions in America that are higher than ever. There is justifiable concern that, given the lines being drawn in the sand, the country could once more fall into the darkness of racially motivated violence against Black youth.
Over the years since the height of the Civil Rights movement, the deaths of young Black boys and girls at the hands of white people have continued to occur. Yes, strides have been made, and the current times are nowhere near as volatile as they may have been in the 1960s. But America feels closer to that powder keg moment now more than ever.
There might be a period of recourse if political rhetoric is toned down and certain elected officials, who are expected to lead the nation, discontinue parroting the worst of right-wing conspiracy theories. The deaths of these Black Birmingham youth should serve as a warning of how racism, bigotry, and violence develop into a wildfire when it goes unchecked, and how far many are willing to deliver pain and destruction in the name of their beliefs.
[h/t AL.com]
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Photo: Getty
