If you haven’t seen this picture before, it’s one that you won’t soon forget. That’s just the way Mamie Carthan wanted it to be in 1955. That was the year that her son Emmett Till was murdered down in the Mississippi Delta. Till was visiting from Chicago that summer and had reportedly flirted with a white woman. The 14 year-old was taken from a relative’s house in the middle of the night, pistol whipped and thrown into the back of a pick-up truck. Then he was taken to a barn where he was beaten. One of his eyes was gouged out and he was shot. A 70 pound cotton gin was tied around his neck and he was thrown into the Tallahatchie River. His body was found three days later. His mother requested an open-casket funeral so that the world could see and never forget the brutality of his murder.
The two men accused of the kidnapping and murder, Roy Bryant and J.W.Milam were tried and acquitted. It was a gross case of racial injustice in the state of Mississippi. The two accused later admitted to the crimes in a magazine article, but they were unable to be re-tried because of Double Jeopardy.
During the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s the Black church was not only a place of worship. It was a place of refuge, a place where Blacks felt safe from the hatred of racism. That is, until the church became a meeting place for the struggle confront racial justice. As organizers started to go against the grain of the tradition of White supremacy, the church became a target of violence.
50 years ago on September 15th 1963, two weeks after the March on Washington,the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed. It was Youth Day and four girls in attendance that day were killed. The bodies of Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Weslely lied lifeless in the sanctuary. As sacrifices for justice on earth, their spirits were safely taken to heaven by the hand of God.
As for the church, it was badly damaged. The blast had blown a hole in the back of its wall. The steps were demolished and every glass structure was shattered, except for one stained-glass window. On it was a picture of Christ. He was leading a group of small children. The story of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing is told in the documentary 4 Little Girls.
During the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s the Black church was not only a place of worship. It was a place of refuge, a place where Blacks felt safe from the hatred of racism. That is, until the church became a meeting place for the struggle confront racial justice. As organizers started to go against the grain of the tradition of White supremacy, the church became a target of violence.
As for the church, it was badly damaged. The blast had blown a hole in the back of its wall. The steps were demolished and every glass structure was shattered, except for one stained-glass window. On it was a picture of Christ. He was leading a group of small children. The story of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing is told in the documentary 4 Little Girls.