A bombing in Birmingham
September 15, 2024
Today is the monthly fast for peace, and like others around the country and the world, I’m giving up food. Sixty-one years ago in Birmingham, Alabama, four girls gave up their lives… and that’s the story I’d like to tell in this post.
Although it had been nearly a decade since the Supreme Court had ruled school segregation was unconstitutional, in 1963 Alabama was still resisting integration. (I find it more sad than ironic that in 2023, the legislature again refused a Supreme Court order to treat Blacks equitably.)
In the spring, Birmingham attracted national attention as Martin Luther King Jr. and others led a struggle for civil rights. King was arrested in April for protesting in violation of a court injunction and held on $160,000 bail, which even today seems like an obscene amount for a protester. The time behind bars gave him the opportunity to pen his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail.
The city had earned the nickname ‘Bombingham,’ from the frequent use of explosives as weapons of terror against Blacks. After the school system was forcibly integrated, three bombs exploded in an 11-day span, the last of which was on at 10:22am on Sunday, September 15. Some 200 people were inside the 16th Street Baptist Church, more than a dozen were injured, and the bodies of four girls were found in the rubble.
Three days later, King delivered a eulogy before a crowd of 8,000 mourners, which I’d like to share an excerpt from:
…they died nobly. They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. And so this afternoon in a real sense 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 have something to say to every [person] … who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice.
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.
In 2024, America still has many systemic problems which stem from the triple evils King identified as poverty, racism, and militarism. The fast for peace—King defined peace as the presence of justice—is a call for cooperation, that the work may go forward, passionately and unrelentingly. Together, we will prevail.
Can you think of a time you substituted courage for caution?