Less than one month after gospel singer Mahalia Jackson stood behind her friend, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and urged him to tell the world about his “dream,” Denise McNair, 11, Carol Robertson, 14, Cynthia Wesley, 14, and Addie Mae Collins, 14, were killed when the Ku Klux Klan bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
The day was September 15, 1963 and the nation lost the last vestiges of its innocence.
The Civil Rights Movement was further galvanized by the incident and Americans — stunned by the senseless act of violence — joined in and demanded that equality and justice become the way of the land below the Mason-Dixon Line.
On May 24, President Barack Obama, surrounded by members of the girls’ families, signed a bill that posthumously granted Collins, McNair, Robertson and Wesley the Congressional Gold Medal.
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