Handle Hate With Care
Tense times following the shooting death of conservative activist, Charlie Kirk, helped me recall long-ago wisdom my parents shared to help soothe a panicked daughter.
Anniversary of A Previous Tragedy
As a preteen, I was close in age to the victims of the Birmingham church murders when this news rocked the world, the nation, my family and me.
Above: 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing victims. Clockwise from top L: Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson—all age 14, and Denise McNair, age 11. Photo Wikipedia: WPFU.
I’m an elder now and still shocked by the horrific, bloody details from that September day. I beg everyone to review this version of the tragedy, as written by Austin Channing Brown in I’m Still Here. (See sources.)
“History is collapsing on itself once again. On Sunday, September 15, 1963, a bomb tore through the walls of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.”
“Inside, Black congregation members had been preparing for their Sunday service, unaware that members of the Ku Klux Klan had laid sticks of dynamite under the church's stairs. Twenty-two people were injured in the planned attack, and four little girls were killed: Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins—all fourteen years old and eleven-year-old Denise McNair,“ Brown wrote.
"The blood of our little children is on your hands," the Los Angeles NAACP newsletter quotes Martin Luther King, Jr. from his telegram to George Wallace, Alabama’s segregationist governor, after the bombing.
And just reading the name George Wallace (which used to appear every day in our newspaper or on our new black-and-white television set) brings back a sudden childhood sense of fear.
According to a September 15, 2023 post on the Los Angeles NAACP’s official website, 60 Years Later: 16th Street Baptist Church Commemoration Service, more than 8,000 people had attended the girls' funeral service held at Birmingham’s Sixth Avenue Baptist Church.
Honoring Their Memory:
“Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.” —John F. Kennedy.
“In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.” —Maya Angelou.
16th Street bombing fragments from the Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of the Family of Rev. Norman C. "Jim" Jimerson and Melva Brooks Jimerson.
Link to: Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Dad insisted we remember his favorite George Washington Carver poem as crucial guidance for living. “Treat everyone, EVERYONE as you want to be treated,” Dad reminded us often.
I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.—Jackie Robinson, major league baseball player, 1954.
Which brings me to Charlie Kirk and his grieving family, friends and followers. You are in my thoughts and prayers. Please know you have my sincere condolences. And feel my hugs.
"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in your life, you will have been all of these." —George Washington Carver, Scientist.
Thank you for reading Great Migration—Donna
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Sources:
Link to Spike Lee Documentary 4 Little Girls
Link to 1997 Urban Streaming Network story and interview about Spike Lee’s 1963 Baptist Church documentary: Spike Lee’s 4 Little Girl’s
Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot (Deyst, 2023).
I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made For Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown (Convergent Books, 2018).
Please join in my continued search for information regarding From the Plantation to the Doctor’s Office by Dr. H. Roger Williams, published in the mid-1920s. Contact this great-granddaughter with any tips (from libraries, old media and more).
Wonderful thanks I needed this.
I appreciate your words, Donna. 🙏🏼