Today in History

September 15, 1963
Bombingham
An explosion rips through the Sixteenth Street Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sunday morning, September 15. Placed by members of the Ku Klux Klan, the dynamite bomb kills four African American girls and wounds 20 others. Before the day ends riots break out in Birmingham, a center of the civil rights movement, and the nation's outrage at the bombing galvanizes support to dismantle segregation. It will be almost four decades before the last of the four perpetrators is convicted of the crime, in 2002. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a childhood friend of one of the victims, speaks at the unveiling of commemorative plaques for the victims in 2005.



Today's Feature History Article

Fearing the Worst

A church is bombed. A daughter is missing. A rediscovered photograph recalls one of the most heart-wrenching episodes of the civil rights era.




 



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