PLBC Chairwoman Donna Bullock Remarks on Somber Anniversary

Four girls martyred 60 years ago in Alabama bombing

Rep. Donna Bullock    September 15, 2023 | 2:29 PM

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the tragic bombing of the Sixteenth Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL., taking the lives of four little girls and rocking the nation. The members of the PLBC reflect on one of the darkest days in our country's history as a time to honor the strength and struggles of Black Pennsylvanians yesterday and today.

On Sept. 15, 1963 the Ku Klux Klan planted a bomb that exploded at 10:22 a.m. in the church’s basement, killing 11-year old Denise McNair and 14-year-olds Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins, while injuring several others. We remember the innocent souls needlessly lost on this day, as well as other lives harmed or lost to acts of racial violence in our nation. The loss of these precious children was a critical moment during the civil rights movement. Today, their legacy is evident in the criminal justice, police reform and racial justice movements often led by young people not much older than them at the time of their death.

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