KKK Bombs 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham Killing Four Young Girls

On September 15, 1963, at approximately 10:24 AM, four members of the Ku Klux Klan detonated 19 sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device beneath the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The explosion killed four young African American girls—Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole Robertson (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), and Carol Denise McNair (11)—who were in the church basement preparing for Youth Day services. Twenty-two others were injured, including Collins’ younger sister Sarah. The bombing occurred less than three weeks after the March on Washington and came in direct retaliation for the May 1963 desegregation agreement that ended the Birmingham Campaign, demonstrating the violent extremism that characterized institutional resistance to civil rights progress.

The 16th Street Baptist Church had long been a significant religious center for Birmingham’s Black community and a routine meeting place for civil rights organizers including Martin Luther King Jr. Many of the protest marches during the Birmingham Campaign had begun at the church steps. By 1963, white supremacist bombings of Black homes and churches had become so common that Birmingham was known as “Bombingham.” The FBI’s 1965 investigation identified the four perpetrators—Robert Edward Chambliss, Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., Herman Frank Cash, and Bobby Frank Cherry—as known KKK members and segregationists. However, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who was simultaneously running COINTELPRO operations against civil rights leaders, blocked prosecution of the suspects, claiming insufficient evidence despite the bureau’s detailed investigation.

Justice was systematically denied for decades due to institutional obstruction. Robert Chambliss was not convicted of murder until November 14, 1977—fourteen years after the bombing—following renewed investigation by Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley. Thomas Blanton was convicted on May 1, 2001, and Bobby Frank Cherry was convicted in 2002, nearly forty years after their crime. Herman Cash died in 1994, never having been prosecuted. The delayed prosecutions resulted from a combination of FBI interference, local law enforcement complicity with the KKK, and Alabama’s judicial system’s unwillingness to pursue white terrorists who murdered Black children. The bombing and the decades of failed accountability illustrated the systematic institutional corruption that protected white supremacist violence: federal law enforcement prioritized surveillance of civil rights activists over prosecution of terrorists, local authorities collaborated with or ignored KKK activity, and the judicial system refused to deliver justice for Black victims. The attack galvanized support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but the institutional failures that enabled the bombing and delayed accountability revealed how deeply white supremacy was embedded in law enforcement and judicial institutions at every level of government.