While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age during the Civil Rights Movement

McKinstry was shocked by the news of her friends’ deaths. She and Cynthia were meant to have the Cavalettes’ meeting later that day, and she could not comprehend that her best friend was gone. She was also shaken by the realization that she had been “terrifyingly close” to death herself.

A few months after the bombing, McKinstry learned that Addie Collins’ sister Sarah was also in the bathroom when the blast went off. She was hit in the eyes with flying glass and rushed to the hospital, where a white nurse “purposely and intentionally” broke segregation rules to admit Sarah. She lost one of her eyes and retained only partial vision in the other. The bodies of the other four girls were unearthed in the moments following the bomb, as church members dug through the rubble. The girls’ bodies were damaged almost beyond recognition. Cynthia was beheaded in the explosion, and a large rock was embedded in Denise’s skull. McKinstry tried to block out these gruesome details, but they remained in her mind for the rest of her life.

McKinstry and her family passed the rest of the day in shocked silence. The civil rights movement had suddenly become very personal for McKinstry; although she knew about the frequent bombings in Birmingham, she had never known anyone who died. She had always felt safe and protected, but now she realized she could be killed because she was Black. Her best friend was dead, and the haven of her church was violated. She understood “the depth of the volatility between blacks and whites” (74) with new clarity.

Following the bombing, Martin Luther King Jr. visited Birmingham, urging Black people to remain nonviolent. He sent President John F. Kennedy a message advising him to take action to maintain peace in Birmingham. He also sent a message to Alabama’s segregationist governor, George Wallace, holding him responsible for the girls’ deaths. Two weeks later, Wallace appeared on the cover of Time magazine, set against the backdrop of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church’s broken stained-glass window with the headline “Alabama: Civil Rights Battlefield.”

The church remained closed for eight months for repairs and renovations. Eventually, it reopened, but with lingering memories of the bombing: The church’s clock stayed frozen at 10:22 am, the exact moment the bomb went off, and the women’s bathroom was left untouched—sealed off with a new wall, which McKinstry interprets as an effort to forget the bombing. However, she and others refused to forget.

Going to sleep the night of the bombing, McKinstry felt sick and afraid. She thought it was “just a matter of time” before she would be killed, and she felt trapped in “a nightmarish web of memories that would hover over [her] for many years to come” (77). McKinstry explains that bombs were commonplace in Birmingham at the time. The perpetrators were never punished, and Black community members never received apologies. However, the deaths of the four innocent girls brought mainstream attention to Birmingham. It was “a pivotal point” for McKinstry, her community, and the entire nation. A white attorney from Birmingham was the first to speak out, blaming everyone who had “refused to take responsibility for the pervasive racial hatred in the city” (78) for the girls’ deaths. As a consequence, he was threatened and forced to flee the city with his family.

After the tragedy, McKinstry was “overwhelmed with disbelief.” Her friends vanished “like an invisible breath or vapor” (78). Although she tried hard to accept what had happened, she continued to suffer.

Three of the girls—Addie, Denise, and Cynthia—were buried at a joint funeral on September 18. Carole’s family held a private service the previous day. Martin Luther King Jr. gave the girls’ eulogies, and 8,000 mourners attended the service. McKinstry stayed home, unable to face the coffins that held her friends’ bodies. At the service, Dr. King called for justice but also hoped that the tragedy might “cause the white South to come to terms with its conscience” (83).

However, following the bombing, no one mentioned the dead girls. People around McKinstry acted as if the tragedy never happened.

The church bombing and George Wallace’s cover story in Time magazine brought the racial violence in Birmingham to the national stage. McKinstry saw Governor Wallace as “a permanent fixture holding Black people back” (86). He was determined to keep Alabama segregated and uphold laws that affected every aspect of Black people’s lives. Because McKinstry never heard white people speaking up about civil rights, she assumed they all held the same racist views as Wallace; she “had no reason to trust a white person” (89).

In the days following the bombing, President Kennedy sent soldiers to neutralize the “racial chaos” that engulfed Birmingham. He also sent FBI agents to investigate the bombing. Two of them interviewed McKinstry. She initially felt hopeful, thinking the men would achieve justice for her dead friends. However, the investigation never gained traction. The FBI identified four suspects, all Ku Klux Klan members, but the FBI claimed there wasn’t enough evidence to convict, even though “everyone—including the FBI—knew” the men were responsible (91). In 1968, while McKinstry was in college, the FBI closed the case without charging anyone. She felt as if her friends were “forgotten.”

McKinstry reflects on how differently the aftermath of the bombing would have been if the tragedy had occurred today. She thinks that the next day would’ve been declared an official day of mourning, and parents would have made their children appointments with therapists, and schools would have been prepared with crisis counselors. However, on the Monday after the tragedy, she went to school like nothing had happened. She “felt numb” but continued to move through life as before. No one offered her “words of comfort or consolation” (94).