Today is the 48th anniversary of a significant and painful moment in the battle for civil rights in the United States, an event Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. described as "one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity." On September 15, 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, was bombed and four girls were killed. Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley were all 14; Denise McNair was the youngest at 11 years old.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- who was born and raised in Birmingham -- was 8 years old at the time. She heard and felt the explosion and later learned she knew two of the victims; one was her schoolmate. In a 2010 interview on NBC's Today show, Meredith Viera asked Rice what it was like "growing up in the most segregated city in the entire country" and what her reactions were to the bombing:
Denise in particular was a friend, her family, very good friends. And I remember thinking, you know, 'How could people hate us so much?' But the wonderful thing about the people of Birmingham is that somehow they weren't made bitter by the experiences, they weren't beaten down by the experiences. They rose to the occasion. They proved that you might not be able to control your circumstances, but you can certainly control how you reacted to your circumstances.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a moving eulogy for the four victims during a service in Birmingham on September 18, 1963. He acknowledged them as "the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignitiy" and told the audience that "they have something to say to each of us in their death":
They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism....They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream. . . ."
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