God spoke clearly to me through the pastor’s yellowed letter.
“Lord,” I prayed, “through Pastor Fisher’s appeal, are you showing me the more important work you want me to do for you, for your people, and for your Kingdom?”
Yes, child, he spoke to my heart.
I put the letter down. “But, Lord,” I asked, “how can we repair the church and make it better for future generations if we have no money?”
You can raise the money, Carolyn, God said to my spirit.
Me? Raise the money? “It will take millions of dollars to repair this church, Lord! I have no idea how to raise that kind of money!”
God sent to me, and to our church, a huge blessing in the form of Dr. Neal Berte, a retired president of Birmingham-Southern College. I expressed to him my vision for the church and the needs I saw, and he helped me start a campaign in Birmingham to raise the money. He encouraged me and taught me how to approach people around our city and state and ask for their help. In my view, this wasn’t just a reconstruction campaign; it was part of the bigger vision for reconciliation in our city. I felt that God was calling me to be part of this effort to bring people together, to demonstrate a tangible expression of interracial progress.
It seemed that everyone I talked with wanted to donate money to the cause—individuals, corporations, and foundations. In a relatively short time, they contributed almost $4 million! In my eyes, one of the biggest blessings was that the campaign crossed all socioeconomic, religious, political, racial, gender, and age boundaries. Many donors had never had the opportunity to make a public statement for Civil Rights. They considered this fund-raising campaign an opportunity to do so.
With $4 million in the Sixteenth Street Foundation Inc. treasury, I told Jerome, “Now there will always be resources to maintain Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, to keep it alive, to keep telling the story.”
The foundation hired architects and construction crews to complete the extensive renovations. In the midst of the repairs, the architect posted a sign at the church—a statement that perhaps said it all: “A restoration of hope!” Dr. Berte later told the Birmingham News, “We weren’t sure we could get the money. I think it’s a tremendous testimony to Birmingham—it speaks volumes about how far our city has come.”[84]
When I stepped back and looked at the newly restored church, it truly felt like a piece of God’s work of redemption. The place that had once been the site of lives lost was once again a place of new life. The place that had been a marker of hatred and despair was now a symbol of hope and reconciliation. The history and legacy of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church would be forever visible—a tall, stately sign of struggle, sacrifice, and triumph.
But our work was not finished. Now that the outer structure was once again secure, Dr. Berte and I wondered whether the church, with its rich history and its role in the Civil Rights movement, should be listed as a national historic landmark. That would qualify it to receive federal funds so it would remain strong, stable, and safe for future generations. Through the untiring efforts of Marjorie White, president of the Birmingham Historical Society, the church earned the national historic landmark status. It fell to me to fly to Washington, D.C., to address the United States Department of the Interior Committee on National Historic Landmarks. I told them the church’s story and why we thought the church should be considered for this national status. I recounted the details of the church bombing, recalling that September morning somberly.
The committee listened. And they agreed. In 2006, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church became a national historic landmark. The United States attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, brought the landmark paperwork and plaque to the church himself.
* * *
Every day, 365 days a year, people come from all over the world to visit Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. They want to see the place and touch the building where courageous people died in the struggle for freedom. The church remains a symbol of hope for all who enter its doors. The church does have a history marred by pain and loss, but it has also inherited a legacy of hope, love, and reconciliation.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “I like to believe that the negative extremes of Birmingham’s past will resolve into the positive and utopian extreme of her future; that the sins of a dark yesterday will be redeemed in the achievements of a bright tomorrow.”[85]
God is capable of redeeming even the ugliest and darkest moments from our past. But sometimes we first have to be willing to go back and face some of those painful places again. For example, if I’d had my way, I would never have set foot in Princeton Hospital again. But in the roundabout way in which God often works, I did find myself back there . . . some forty years after Mama Lessie’s death and thirty years after Grandaddy had died there.
In the early years of the twenty-first century, I was getting my seminary degree at Birmingham’s Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University—something I wouldn’t have been able to do just a generation ago. During the course of my master of divinity classes, I journeyed back to Princeton Hospital for an internship. It was something my soul insisted I do. I had “unfinished business” there, and I needed to deal with it head-on. This time, however, I visited not as the little girl in the corner of the basement when Mama Lessie had died but as a hospital chaplain.
The hospital had long been desegregated by this point. In my rounds as a part-time chaplain, I often thought back to those sad, frightening days when Mama Lessie lay dying in the unfinished basement. Now, as one of God’s servants, I could provide spiritual and tangible comfort to those who needed it, without regard to color or religion. I could offer love and support during their times of illness and bereavement because I knew what it was like to be there. In his divine knack for bringing things full circle, God called me to do for others what had not been done for my grandmother.
* * *
The deaths of my four girlfriends left me with a pain I cannot describe. But something beautiful has come of it, and that’s the vision God has given for reconciliation. My passion is to see people learn to work together and appreciate the diversity God created among us. This has become a calling for me, and I think about it all the time. I have been given opportunities to answer this call in my own city in smaller, daily ways. But I also receive national and international invitations to share that same passion for reconciliation in our world.
In the 1960s, it seemed as though reconciliation was primarily about blacks and whites. But today it’s even broader, and it really comes down to interactions between individuals. The core of the issue is still the same, however. I believe that if we can’t learn to live with our brothers and sisters here on earth, how will we get a chance to work it out in heaven? I also believe that one good deed begets another good deed and that if we all adopt a spirit of love toward our neighbors and toward each individual we encounter, we can slowly make this world a better place—a place of reconciliation, as God intended.
It has been more than forty years since my friends were killed, and we’ve made some progress in that time. But I have a greater vision for the next forty years—a vision of building a society where the lamb can truly lie with the lion and there will be peace.
I’m reminded of one of the classic hymns we used to sing at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church: “It Is Well with My Soul.”
When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul. . . .
And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.
At this point in my life, I am able to imagine Addie, Cynthia, Denise, and Carole perched on a cloud somewhere in the sky, their arms around each other, looking down at the church. And it is clear to them that all is
well. They are waving their hands and saying, “Carry on! Carry on! It is well with our souls.”
And it is also well with my own soul.
Photo Insert
Me at age two with my aunt Maxine in front of our house in Birmingham.
Me at age nine in my third-grade school photo.
Me at age two (on the right, with one shoe), playing with friends in our front yard.
Standing in front of my granddaddy’s house at age thirteen with my cousin Deloris (on the left) and my granddad, Rev. E. W. Burt.
Taken on my graduation day from A. H. Parker High School, May 1965.
Me during my freshman year at Fisk University.
With my husband, Jerome, on Christmas Day 2002.
With Condoleezza Rice at an event in Duluth, Georgia, in April 2008.
With Jimmy Carter at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in January 2009.
I lost my friends (from left) Denise McNair, 11; Carole Robertson, 14; Addie Mae Collins, 14; and Cynthia Wesley, 14, at 10:22 a.m., September 15, 1963.
A civil defense worker and firefighters walk through the debris following the explosion at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.
Police officers stand guard outside the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church after the bombing. The explosion did extensive damage to the church and shattered the face of Jesus in the stained-glass window seen in the background.
Flowers cover the caskets of Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, and Cynthia Wesley as funeral services are held at the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church on September 18, 1963.
Mourners who overflowed the church stand across the street during funeral services for 14-year-old Carole Robertson, September 17, 1963.
A friend wipes tears from the face of Mrs. Lorene Ware during funeral services for her son Virgil Lamar Ware, September 22, 1963, in Birmingham. Virgil was killed during one of several racially motivated incidents that occurred immediately following the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing.
A seventeen-year-old demonstrator is attacked by a police dog during a Civil Rights march in Birmingham, May 1963.
The Birmingham Fire Department aims high-pressure water hoses at several student marchers during Dr. Martin Luther King’s children’s march in May 1963.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addresses marchers during his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963.
Robert F. Kennedy uses a bullhorn to address black demonstrators speaking out for equal rights on June 14, 1963.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (left), Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, and Rev. Ralph Abernathy hold a news conference in Birmingham on May 8, 1963.
This stained-glass window was given to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in 1965 by the people of Wales following the bombing.
Epilogue
For many years I hated those Klan members who bombed my church and killed my four young friends. I wondered how they could do what they did—hurt innocent people because of their skin color. I was angry and confused, and I felt powerless to fix the problem. Hatred, unforgiveness, and bitterness were eating me up, slowly destroying me.
When I was a child and a young adult, it hadn’t really occurred to me that I needed to forgive Klan members. I learned, however, that the hate I held in my heart was hurting me, not them. I cried regularly for twenty years after the bombing. Every time I saw something that reminded me of my friends’ deaths, I relived all the past pain and sorrow. In my anger and hurt, I became dependent on alcohol to numb my inner pain, and I couldn’t sleep at night. I spent years struggling with depression and strained relationships before I was finally able to release this hatred that I harbored in my heart.
I’ll never forget the day I fell on my knees and prayed a specific prayer of surrender: “God, I don’t know what I’ve done to myself—the smoking, the drinking, the sleepless nights. I have become a nervous wreck. Please, God, give me the strength to put it all down. Please fix my body and take away my cravings for alcohol. Please touch me with your healing so I can go forward, knowing I’ve left behind all the unforgiveness in my heart.” That prayer was the beginning of the healing process for me. I made a conscious choice that day to forgive the men who had caused me, my family, my friends, and my community such fear and pain.
I still had much to learn about forgiveness, however—that was only the first step. I didn’t know how it worked, why it healed, what Scripture said about it. I had a lot of growing and maturing to do, and they didn’t happen overnight. Even now, when my memory returns to those dark, frightening times, I must go back to God in prayer and ask him to keep unforgiveness from my heart and to help me see offending people through his eyes, not my own. I know that because of the way Christ has forgiven me, I have no option but to forgive others who have intentionally hurt me and those I love.
At its core, forgiveness is a spiritual act—it’s not something we can do in our own strength. As a Christian woman who has been forgiven by God, I have come to understand that God created all of us—including Bobby Frank Cherry, Thomas Blanton, Robert Chambliss, and Governor George Wallace—even though their hearts overflowed with hate and they allowed that hate to dictate their cruel actions. I have also learned that just as God loves me, he also loves all the people he created. He does not love the crimes they commit, the disrespectful language they use, the bitterness they nurture in their hearts, or the pain and suffering they bring to others. But he loves them.
I have often read and reflected on the Bible’s account of Jesus’ crucifixion (see Luke 23:33-43). From the cross, Jesus looked down on the men who crucified him and prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). On each side of Jesus, two common criminals—both deserving of their punishment—had also been nailed to wooden crosses. One thief insulted Jesus. The other criminal, however, rebuked the insulting thief, saying, “This man has done nothing wrong” (Luke 23:41). Then the criminal looked toward the dying Jesus and made a request of deep faith: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:42-43).
Jesus forgave the men who crucified him as well as the thief who hung beside him. Pondering that Scripture, as well as other passages throughout the Bible, I came to understand that I, too, needed to forgive those who had hurt me and my family and friends. And that forgiveness was more important for me than for them. It allowed me to move forward with the life God had planned for me. During those times of prayer, Scripture reading, and reflection God seemed to touch my heart. He helped me through the long process of forgiveness, and by his grace I chose to sincerely forgive all those who had so profoundly impacted my young life. Once I forgave, the burden I had carried in my heart lifted. I began to see people the way God sees them. When I stepped into the witness box in that courtroom some forty years after Bobby Cherry had bombed my church, I looked at the man in a different way. Though I was still afraid of him, I could also see another side to him. He looked like an old, tired—albeit hate-filled—grandfather, not the murderer of four innocent Sunday school girls.
I know all of us are capable of evil, but I also believe that as people made in God’s image, there is also good in all of us. Surely we must become intentional in looking for that good.
Loving Our Neighbors
One of the biggest lessons in forgiveness I’ve learned is that God has called me—and each one of us—to care for our neighbors. I try to live by this Scripture verse: “Love does no harm to its neighbor” (Romans 13:10). Jesus himself had a lot to say about the way we treat our neighbors. In addition to the great commission, he also gave us one of the greatest commandments: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). Who are our neighbors? Every person on earth, regardless of color, age, gender, or financial circumstances. What does it mean to love our neighbors? It means forgiving them when they hurt or offend us or someone we love. It means letting go of our anger and resentmen
t against them. It means looking at them with God’s eyes and seeing the goodness in them as creatures made by the almighty Creator God. It means doing our neighbors no harm and treating them as we ourselves want to be treated.
Above all, genuine love does something—it never sits back and watches. Compassion doesn’t require a large committee or a formal, organized approach. You and I can each become a “committee of one.” Hurting people surround us. On each day that God gives us life, we can intentionally strive to help those who are in need. Just imagine what could happen if each one of us reached out every day and touched one person with Christ’s love. One by one, healing would take place in people’s hearts. I believe we can help heal the world with something as simple as daily acts of kindness.
Only about six months after the bomb blast killed my four friends at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, in the spring of 1964, a young woman in New York City was stabbed and killed in public. Thirty-eight of her neighbors watched her murder but did nothing to help save her life. They opened their windows, looked out at the screaming woman fighting for her life, and simply watched. The woman was twenty-eight-year-old Catherine Genovese. Her neighbors called her “Kitty.” She was returning home late from work one evening and a man grabbed her. Kitty cried out to the watching neighbors for help, but no one responded. The man stabbed her, and she again screamed for help: “He stabbed me! Please help me! Please help me!” The assailant ran away, and Kitty struggled to her feet. When nobody came to her aid, she continued to scream for help: “I’m dying! I’m dying!” But still no one responded. Seeing no opposition, the assailant returned and stabbed Kitty to death—while the world watched. Later, when detectives asked spectators why they didn’t simply dial “0” on their phones and call the police, one person said, “I don’t know.” Another said, “I didn’t want to get involved.”[86] If we truly love our neighbors, we will protect them from others who hurt or humiliate them. We will step into their situations and take a stand for them as individuals created by God.
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