Birmingham Church Marks 63rd Bombing Anniversary With New Visitor Center

Hundreds of people gathered at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on Tuesday to mark the 63rd anniversary of a Ku Klux Klan bombing that killed four girls preparing for Sunday services.

The church used the occasion to open a new visitors center, which leaders described as a space to teach visitors about one of the most horrific events of the Civil Rights Movement and to call for a renewed commitment to justice.

On Sept. 15, 1963, a bundle of dynamite that Klansmen had placed under a set of stairs outside the church exploded at 10:22 a.m. The blast killed 11-year-old Denise McNair and Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins, all 14. A fifth girl, Sarah Collins Rudolph, the sister of Addie Mae, was in the downstairs washroom at the time and was severely injured but survived.

The attack came at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, eight months after then-Gov. George Wallace pledged "segregation forever." Three Klansmen were eventually convicted: Robert Chambliss in 1977, Thomas Blanton in 2001 and Bobby Frank Cherry in 2002.

Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative and the guest speaker at the annual memorial service, said the remembrance comes at a moment when politicians are trying to remove content from museums, attacking the Voting Rights Act and turning to the politics of division.

"We're in a critical moment in America. There is a narrative struggle. There are people who are preaching the politics of fear and anger, and they want to govern through fear and anger," Stevenson said.

Stevenson, who helped build memorials and museums tracing the legacy of slavery in the United States, said a "whole network of elected officials" — not only the Klan — bore responsibility for the climate that led to the bombing.

"And today we have those same voices, and we have to stand against those voices by being committed to truth and justice," he said.

The opening of the education center comes amid uncertainty about how history is presented in national parks and museums. President Donald Trump in March 2025 signed an executive order aimed at defunding museum exhibits and programs he said promote "divisive narratives."

The church sits within the bounds of the National Park Service's civil rights monument in Birmingham, an area that includes the park where Black protesters were met by police dogs and fire hoses. The church independently runs the visitors center.

The new center has space for exhibits, oral history initiatives, artist residencies, community quilting projects, public speaker series and other programming. Church leaders envision it as a place where people can reflect after visiting the church and bombing site.

"I want them to take away that history is not just in the past. History is also present, and that there's still work to do," said the Rev. Arthur Price Jr., the pastor of 16th Street Baptist. "When we talk about the challenges in our country, when we talk about the injustice, the inequity, and the inequality, there's still a whole lot of work for us to do."

Lisa McNair, whose sister Denise was among those killed, said the story belongs to all Americans.

"It's part of our shared American history, and if we don't know our history, we're destined to repeat it," McNair said at Tuesday's event.