Birmingham Church Bombing Victims Honored on 50th Anniversary
By Russell Goldman
ABC News
Sep 15, 2013
Four young girls killed 50 years ago today, whom Martin Luther King Jr. called “martyrs” in the fight for racial equality, were posthumously awarded one of the country’s highest civilian honors this week.
The girls, all black members of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, were killed in 1963 when a white supremacist planted a bomb in the church on a Sunday morning.
On Tuesday, the girls were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, a rare honor that requires an act of both houses of Congress.
Addie Mae Collins, 14; Denise McNair, 11; Carole Robertson, 14; and Cynthia Wesley; 14, were killed Sept. 15, 1963, in the attack that struck the packed church on a Sunday morning. Twenty-two others were injured.
The bomb, composed of dynamite and a timer, was planted beneath the front steps of the church, outside a basement room in which 26 children attended a Sunday school sermon.
The blast sent a fireball into the air, blowing out a stained-glass window, sending shrapnel into the air and melting metal fixtures...
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