BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WCSC) – Four Black children were killed and more than a dozen were hurt in a bombing at a Birmingham, Alabama, church during the Civil Rights movement.
The bomb exploded in a back stairwell of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church just before 10:30 a.m. on Sept. 15, 1963, the FBI said. It killed Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, all 14 years old; and 11-year-old Cynthia Wesley.
Two more teenagers were killed after riots broke out in the aftermath of the bombing, leading Alabama Gov. George Wallace to send 500 National Guardsmen and 300 state troopers to the city.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. held a press conference one day after the bombing, calling on the U.S. Army to come to Birmingham and “take over this city and run it.”…