While the World Watched

by Carolyn McKinstry

  “Hey! Good morning!” I called to four of my friends who were primping in front of the restroom’s large lounge mirror. At that time, I didn’t know that five girls were in the bathroom. I didn’t see Sarah, Addie’s sister, who was in a separate area near the washbowls and toilets.

  The four girls—Denise, Addie, Carole, and Cynthia—combed their hair and chattered excitedly as they readied themselves for the 11:00 morning youth service.

  Denise McNair smiled at me. She was always smiling, showing that little gap between her two front teeth. One of our teachers told us that in Africa “the gap” was considered a rare and enviable beauty mark. At eleven years old, Denise was a few years younger than I was, but I thought she was pretty and smart, and I always liked the way her mom fixed her hair.

  An only child, Denise was doted on by her parents and grandparents. She always wore pretty, dainty clothes—dresses with fluffy matching pinafores. Denise’s father, Mr. McNair, was my ninth grade teacher. He taught diversified education at Parker High School on Fourth Avenue North in Birmingham. An accomplished photographer, he also owned a black portrait studio. Mrs. McNair, Denise’s mother, had a beautiful voice and sang in the church choir. Sometimes Denise sat beside her mother up in the loft during worship services.

  Poised at the bathroom mirror next to Denise was Addie Collins, a sweet, quiet girl. I liked Addie, but we weren’t particularly close buddies. Addie was just kind of there—serious and serene. She never fussed with anybody or said anything mean. I was closer to Addie’s sister, Junie—I just seemed to gravitate toward her. A little mischievous, Junie laughed a lot and was always so much fun. Junie told me later that she and Addie had argued on the way to church that morning.

  Carole Robertson glanced up and smiled at me too. Our mothers both taught school and were good friends. Carole, a member of Girl Scout troop #264, pinned the numerous badges she had earned to a long sash that draped across her chest and proudly wore her uniform to school. She was cute and always looked impressive in her uniform and badges. Carole played the clarinet in the school band. She was supposed to play that next night—Monday—at Parker High School’s first football game of the year.

  Carole loved God and church as much as I did. We’d grown up together in the church, attending the Easter egg hunts as children and later participating side by side in the youth programs. Carole carried a small Bible in her pocket whenever she went to church and was involved in most of the Sixteenth Street programs, usually with a speaking part. Though she lived in a segregated city with few opportunities for girls of our race, Carole found all kinds of things to do to keep busy. She seemed to hate just sitting still and was always on the move. Mature and ladylike at just fourteen years old, she was a person on a mission: she seemed to know exactly where she was going in life, with a sort of inward direction driving her. I imagined that Carole would become the president of something when she grew up or a leader such as Dorothy Height or Mary McLeod Bethune.

  My best friend, Cynthia Wesley, also stood at the mirror in the basement restroom. I loved Cynthia and her family. She had a great sense of humor, made jokes, and laughed all the time. Her father, Claude Wesley, had been my principal at Finley Avenue Elementary School. That day the Reverend had asked Cynthia to be an usher. She stood at the mirror adjusting the handmade dress that perfectly hugged her tiny waist.

  The Wesleys were professional people, prim and proper, but not in a stuck-up way. I think Mrs. Wesley had had throat cancer years before, although I’m not sure. No black person I knew would ever say the word cancer. When someone slipped and said “the word,” a dark, evil cloud seemed to settle over the room, and everyone started feeling uncomfortable. After Mrs. Wesley’s surgery, she wore some sort of voice box with a small microphone attached. She wrapped pretty scarves around her neck to hide the box, and somehow these scarves always matched her beautiful outfits. But I could hear it when she spoke—the raspy breathing, the gathered mucus, the slightly mechanical tone.

  I remember the way Mr. Wesley walked into my classroom at school—so proper and organized, but not intimidating. He wanted everything to be just right, much like my father did. He never commented on the racial slurs scribbled on the pages of the used textbooks the white schools gave us when they received new ones. Instead, he poured his energy into the positives. When I won the city, county, and state spelling competitions organized for black students, Mr. Wesley publicly expressed a special pride in me.

  The Wesleys’ home was neat, orderly, and beautiful. Mrs.Wesley made their drapes, and she made sure their hardwood floors sparkled. We had many of our Cavalettes meetings at the Wesleys’ home on Dynamite Hill.

  In later years, after the bombing, Mrs. Wesley often reflected on her last conversation with Cynthia on September 15. “That morning,” she told me, “Cynthia walked out the front door, and I called her back into the house. ‘Little lady,’ I said, ‘is that your slip I see showing below your dress?’ A bit of slip lace hung longer than her dress. I suggested she change it before she left for church.”

  * * *

  I left the girls in the restroom. “See you later!” I called and started up the stairs.

  I hurried because the reports had to be summarized by 10:30, when the classes reconvened and the superintendent would stand up and announce, “Sister Maull will read today’s Sunday school summary for us.”

  As I ran up the stairs, I heard the phone ringing in the church office. Out of breath, I rushed inside, picked up the heavy black receiver, and put it to my ear. I opened my mouth to say hello, but before I could say anything, a male voice said simply, “Three minutes.”

  Then he hung up.

  Chapter 2

  Halfway In and Halfway Out

  * * *

  Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning.

  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream”[2]

  All of us might wish at times that we lived in a more tranquil world, but we don’t. And if our times are difficult and perplexing, so are they challenging and filled with opportunity.

  Robert F. Kennedy

  I often tell people I was born in Birmingham, halfway in and halfway out of the South’s violent Civil Rights era. As a young teen, I lived in North Birmingham (near ACIPCO, the American Cast Iron Pipe Company) during the city’s (and the nation’s) darkest and most difficult days—at its worst, when segregation laws proved the fiercest. And I still lived there when those laws came tumbling down. I measured my life in two distinct segments: BB (before the bombing) and AB (after the bombing). I lived through some of the nation’s worst atrocities. But I also witnessed the beginning of healing and forgiveness.

  Not many young people can pinpoint the exact date, time, and place they grew up and became an adult. I can. It was September 15, 1963, 10:22 a.m., at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. My life changed forever after that day. Not only did I lose four friends, but I also lost my innocence and naiveté about people and about the world in general. The loving trust I had in the goodness of humanity was gone. I began to see the world as a deadly and hostile place, where no one, not even my father or my brothers or my church, could protect me. And for the first time in my life, I felt all alone.

  * * *

  My mother, Ernestine Burt Maull, gave birth to me, her third child and first girl-child, three years after World War II ended—on January 13, 1948. I was born in my grandfather’s house in Clanton, Alabama, a city about sixty miles south of North Birmingham. Most black babies were born at home in those days—rarely in hospitals. Daddy often bragged that he helped deliver me. Although he never told me specifically what his role was, I suspect he probably assisted by boiling water and supplying fresh towels. No doubt he also was my mother’s encourager.

  My parents moved to Birmingham when I was two years old, and there I came face-to-face with Jim Crow laws, which enforced segregation. These laws resulted in inferior accommodations for blacks and served only to fuel the existing fear and h
atred between blacks and whites.

  Fear proved a way of life for most people of color in the Deep South during the post–World War II era. But as a child, I felt protected and safe from harm. I lived in a climate of relative security—if you don’t consider the Klan’s random bombings in my area—until more visible signs of unrest and change came to Birmingham in the early sixties. As long as we obeyed the enforced Jim Crow laws and kept our mouths shut, things were bearable. My family and neighbors never challenged the status quo. We had too much to lose—none of us wanted to risk our jobs or our lives.

  * * *

  * * *

  From Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” Speech

  Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.

  But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. . . .

  It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.[3]

  * * *

  * * *

  Living black carried with it certain rules, and there were dire consequences if those rules were broken. Blacks who rode a city bus paid their money in the front of the bus but entered and got off the bus through the back door. They sat in the rear seats behind the signs that said “coloreds.” We were careful not to use public toilets or to drink from water fountains marked “whites only.” When we traveled by car to visit relatives in other cities, we made sure everyone went to the bathroom before we left. And since many restaurants in the South didn’t allow blacks to eat there (some even had signs in the windows that said “We serve no Negroes, Mexicans, or dogs”), we packed our lunches and had picnics on the roadside instead. We always tried to arrive at our destination long before dark because no motels would allow us to stay there and also for safety reasons: it was not uncommon for cars with black passengers inside to be attacked when traveling after dark. So if we had to drive at night, we were mindful of the speed limit, lest we get stopped by white police.

  The summer I was twelve, I traveled to Ohio with my mother’s sister, who lived in Columbus. My aunt had asked me to go to Ohio with her so I could babysit her children. At one point during the trip I told her I had to go to the bathroom. She stopped the car on the side of the road.

  “See that house down there, Carolyn?” she said. “Those look like good people. Go and ask them if you can use their bathroom.”

  I looked down the road and saw a house far in the distance. “I could never do that! Anyway, I’m afraid to go down there!”

  No doubt rural blacks at that time were accustomed to strangers stopping at their house to use the bathroom. But this was new to me—and unimaginable. When I refused to walk to the house, my aunt said, “Well, Carolyn, you’ve got two choices: either go down to that house and ask to use the bathroom, or go behind the car and do your business.”

  So while my aunt waited, I squatted down behind her car, praying that no one would drive by and see me “doing my business.”

  * * *

  Despite the occasional bombings in my city and the Jim Crow laws that were part of my daily reality, I felt safe as a child. I had my family, and I had my church—the strong, seemingly impenetrable, brick building that sat like a fortress on the corner of Sixteenth Street and Sixth Avenue for as long as I could remember. When I wasn’t at home or in school or at Cynthia’s house meeting with the Cavalettes, my parents knew I was at church. Even Daddy could rest assured that I’d be safe there; getting hurt just wasn’t something you thought about happening at church.

  At that time our church served as a concert hall, a public auditorium, and the gathering place for most African-American social events. Church really was everything to us. And Sixteenth Street Baptist Church had its own rich history long before landmark Civil Rights events thrust it into the public eye.

  Some of my fondest memories as a youngster were from my times at church. Sometimes I’d sit quietly in the sanctuary when it was empty and just look around. I knew all the nooks and crannies, the hidden door that led from the balcony, the “secret room” where my friends and I met to talk. As a little girl, I’d played all over the building—even up in the balcony and in the choir loft. I never missed the annual Easter egg hunt held at Kelly Ingram Park or vacation Bible school, which was held for two weeks every summer. Our church placed high value on its children, and I was there in the middle of every opportunity that was offered.

  I’ll never forget my baptism one Sunday morning in September 1961. The previous week, after listening to the music and the reverend’s sermon, I had walked to the front of the church during the altar call. I want to be like Jesus, I was thinking as I went forward. On the Sunday I was baptized, Reverend John Cross dipped me deep into the church’s pool of warm baptismal water. When he lifted me up, I opened my eyes, blinked back the water, and immediately looked up into Jesus’ stained-glass face on the large window just in front of me. Jesus’ eyes had an inviting look, a calm demeanor, a divine patience as he stood outside the wooden door and knocked. I saw in his face a safety and protection beyond anything I could imagine in my small world. “Dead, buried, resurrected with Christ,” Reverend said as he baptized me. I had just placed myself under the protection of Christ, and I could almost hear Jesus saying from that window, “Carolyn, I’m here, watching over you.” For more than half a century, the kind face of Jesus had looked down on its worshipers at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and had offered them that same security.

  My family’s entire social life revolved around the church. In fact, life at home seemed kind of boring compared to life at church. My brothers did their best to make me miserable, as brothers are inclined to do at times. They’d tell me—the girl-child—to get lost whenever their friends came over. They wanted to play only with boys, and they made it clear that in their minds it was a mistake that a girl had entered the Maull family. They might not have wanted me around, but at church I always felt accepted and loved. Nobody there cared that I was a girl-child. Every week I waited for Sunday to roll around the way most kids wait for Christmas.

  The reverend gave me responsibilities at church that made me feel mature and important. I worked in the church office whenever I could. Reverend Cross knew I had been raised and trained in the church and that I was familiar with church business and program planning. He also knew my grandfather, Reverend Ernest Walter Burt. One of fourteen children, my grandfather served as pastor of two churches south of Birmingham. One Sunday he would preach at Macedonia Baptist Church in Columbiana, and the next week he’d be at Beulah Baptist Church in Thorsby. He was also secretary of the National Baptist Convention, and by the time he passed in the spring of 1971, he had served as a principal and teacher in the Chilton County School System for four decades.

  I loved visiting my grandfather and my grandmother, “Mama Les
sie.” It was worth sitting through a long sermon knowing a feast awaited us on the tables outside the church. The menu was always the same: fried chicken, collard greens, potato salad, boiled okra, sliced tomatoes, corn bread, and chocolate or coconut cake. Both Granddaddy and Mama Lessie taught me some rock-solid church organizational skills that proved good training for my work at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

  One year when I was in high school, Reverend Cross asked me to represent our church at the National Baptist Convention in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I felt so honored. While in Tulsa, I walked through the hallways of Oral Roberts University and noticed that many of the buildings were made of glass. I watched the students walk back and forth to class. What a beautiful campus, I thought. I wish I could see Oral Roberts himself. I had seen him on television, and I longed to meet him in person. As I walked around the campus, this thought came to mind: How wonderful it would be to go to a university like this! I feel so comfortable here. I wish the University of Alabama welcomed black students and made them feel as comfortable as I feel here.

  A decade earlier, on May 17, 1954, in the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the United States Supreme Court overruled the “separate but equal” laws once adopted in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case. The Court had decided that “segregation of white and Negro children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race . . . denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.” Chief Justice Earl Warren stated, “Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children . . . for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group.”[4] Warren ordered the nation’s public schools to desegregate “with all deliberate speed.”