Denise McNair, 11; Carole Robertson, 14; Addie Mae Collins, 14; and Cynthia Wesley, 14; from left, are shown in these 1963 photos. A white supremacist Thomas Blanton Jr., 62, was convicted of murder in 2001, for the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing that killed the four girls on Sept. 15, 1963. (AP Photo)
Over 50 years ago, a Black woman stood amid the debris in Birmingham, Alabama, her feet covered with shattered glass from the bombed out 16th Street Baptist Church, cried out in anguish: “My God, you’re not even safe in church!”
That was 1963.
We are still not safe.
Race based violence is not history. It is here.
As a Confederate flag defiantly flies over the South Carolina State Capital, racism and evil struck again, killing 9 people during Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston.
No More Birminghams
Institutional racism still exists, a stubborn stain we can’t whitewash away.
The history we learned in school and the violence we witnessed on the news in the 1960’s were to have served as a wake up call to many Americans concerning racism and violence.
Somehow we tragically fell back to sleep.
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