Sept. 15, 1963, Youth Day at 16th Street Baptist Church. Eleven-year-old Denise McNair and 14-year-olds Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins were in the basement dressing room getting ready to usher on Youth Day. All of a sudden they felt a large earthquake shake the church. Ku Klux Klan members had planted a bomb under some steps on the side of the church the night before; it was set to detonate at a certain time. Because the girls were in the basement, it made it impossible for the girls to even have a chance to escape; all the debris from the top of the church fell down into the basement. Twenty other people were wounded. Why did these four young girls have to lose their lives?

It was a rough time during the Civil Rights Movement. People and their homes were bombed. There had already been three other bombings in Birmingham, and whites were angered because the federal court had just ordered five black students to attend three public schools. Sixteenth Street Baptist Church had been a center for many civil rights rallies and meetings; this is why the church was a target. Klansman Robert Edward Chambliss, the man who planted the bomb, decided that the bomb would be planted and set to detonate on the church's Annual Youth Day. This bombing showed all of America the growing prejudice and hate of the white community toward the Civil Rights Movement. They were willing to risk the lives of many people, mainly children, to get their point across; it just didn't matter.

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