The 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama that took the lives of four young African-American girls was an unnecessary hate crime committed by former KKK conspirators. On September 15, 1963 four conspirators, Ku Klux Klan members, planted and exploded a dynamite bomb, consisting or 15-19 possibly even more than 20 sticks, out side a Birmingham church. The explosion, that took place only days after a federal judge ordered Birmingham; to desegregate its schools this prompted an outbreak of hatred that culminated in the bombing of the church, demolished a wall killing four little black girls- Denise McNair 11, Cynthia Wesley 14, Carole Robertson 14, and Addie Mae Collins. (New York Amsterdam News, magazine). Church members were gathered at the church were gathered up stairs at the church on September 15, 1963, and the little girls were in a basement dressing room preparing for the adult mass service. (The "Bama Bombings, Book). Along with the four little girls there were also more than 22 adults that suffered injuries also. (udel.edu/~jeffmay/civil.html, internet).
Before the bombing accrued in 1963 the church served as a headquarters for many mass meetings and rallies for civil right activists in Birmingham, Alabama. After the bombing this tragedy served as a galvanizing force for the civil rights movement. Also following the bombing moderate whites became more vocal in their oppisiton to segregationist policies in Birmingham. ("Bama Bombings, book).
City officials and Moderate whites who condemned the bombing were never sympathetic to blacks did very little to bring the bombers to justice so the FBI took over .
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the investigation from local authorities that had shown no real concern for solving the .
crime, though they held strong evidence pointing to the bombers. Because of local interference, the FBI did not have as much evidence as they should have.
