Today is the 57th anniversary of one of the most tragic chapters in our nation’s struggle for racial justice. On September 15, 1963 four girls were killed when a bomb exploded at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL. They were in a downstairs room preparing for a Sunday School program when a bomb planted by the KKK went off under an exterior stairwell of the church. Later that day, two black boys were killed in targeted shootings. This horrific violence was in response to progress made through a campaign of nonviolent direct action to desegregate public facilities in Birmingham. Many historians also consider these murders as part of the backlash against the momentous March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom held just weeks before where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. The events of September 15 were awful reminders of the cost of pursuing that dream. Yet in the face of this unimaginable grief, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke the following words as part of the eulogy during the funeral of three of the girls:
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 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.
And so my friends, they did not die in vain. God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. And history has proven over and over again that unmerited suffering is redemptive.
During these days of deep division and the ongoing violence of systemic racial injustice, may the lives lost on September 15, 1963 and those lost in 2020 still speak to us today. As followers of Jesus, we believe that God does not cause suffering but continues to redeem unmerited suffering. The road to true freedom and equality is long and costly. We are called to join that journey in honor of those who went before and in solidarity with those who are committed to racial justice today. Through our ongoing faith and action, we can say along with Dr. King, “…they did not die in vain.”
On this anniversary of the deaths of those four innocent black girls and two innocent black boys, take a few minutes to watch the video posted below. It is a window into the harsh reality of the human toll of that tragedy but also a reminder that their deaths spurred many into action for racial justice.