While the World Watched (6 page)

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
[6]

During those early years of marriage, she birthed five daughters for her hardworking husband. After the girls were born and Mama Lessie passed age thirty, she was able to fulfill her long-held dream: to go back to school. Granddaddy had graduated from the high school of Selma University in 1920. From there he attended Alabama State Teachers College in Montgomery and earned his bachelor of science degree. Selma University later honored him with a doctor of divinity degree. He wanted his wife to have the same educational privileges he had had.

Several years later someone snapped Mama Lessie’s photograph in her black graduation cap and gown. In that photo she wears a slight smile and a combined expression of hope and accomplishment. I am certain she was thinking of the future for her daughters and unborn granddaughters on that day of tremendous accomplishment. Sure enough, all five of her daughters graduated from college. Three became teachers, one became a nurse, and one became a dietitian.

* * *

Now, laid up in the basement of Princeton Hospital, Mama Lessie’s expression held neither hope nor accomplishment. Each evening as I waited for Mama to bring my grandmother’s home-cooked supper and to relieve me, I sat quietly and watched Mama Lessie slowly die.

Mama Lessie passed away one night in late August 1957, on Mama’s watch. In later years we learned that her symptoms (severe vaginal bleeding and stabbing gut pain) probably indicated female cancer.

On Saturday morning August 31, 1957, in the cemetery at Union Baptist Church, we laid Mama Lessie—Mrs. Lessie V. Burt—to rest.

* * *

The worship service was about to begin at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on Sunday morning, September 15, 1963. The clock was ticking. I knew I had only a few minutes left to collect the rest of the reports and write the Sunday school summary. I was looking forward to Reverend Cross’s sermon that morning. He had posted the title on the board outside the church: “A Love That Forgives.” The sermon was to be based on Luke 23:34, the words Christ spoke from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

As I quickly made my way into the sanctuary, I glanced at the large antique clock that hung on the church wall. The time was 10:22 a.m.

Chapter 4

The Bomb Heard 'Round the World

Sunday morning, September 15, 1963

* * *

I'm concerned about a better world. I'm concerned about justice; I'm concerned about brotherhood; I'm concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can't establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate through violence. Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that.

Martin Luther King Jr.,
“Where Do We Go from Here?
”
[7]

I walked into the sanctuary, toward the stained-glass window of Jesus, his kind face and loving eyes focused on me, and that's when I heard it.
Boom!
The blast shook the building.

Thunder?
I thought.
Maybe a lightning strike?

The sound was muffled, not loud and earth shattering like the bombs I had heard so many times when Klan members dynamited black homes and businesses throughout the city.

Glass cracked and crashed to the floor, but I barely noticed. I just wanted to get out of there.

What is happening?
I asked myself.

Someone shouted, “Hit the floor!”

I dropped. Sprawled out flat in the aisle on the sanctuary floor, I still held the Sunday school reports in my hands.

Seconds passed—one . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five. I heard no more sounds. No breaking glass. No movement. No voices. Just silence. Dead silence. More seconds passed—six . . . seven . . . eight . . . nine. Fear enveloped me.
What is happening!
For at least ten full seconds, no one moved. Nothing happened.

Then I heard and felt on the floor beneath me a stampede of feet—moving, running, scurrying to escape the building. Jumping up from the floor, I ran to the nearby exit and looked outside.

What is going on?
Police cars were everywhere.

How could they get here so quickly?
The church was already surrounded, and police were putting up barricades on the streets around the building.

Chaos ruled. Several church members stood outside with stunned expressions. Heads were cut and bleeding. Loved ones wiped their blood-wet faces. Mrs. Demand ran outside, her lower leg gashed by flying glass and her shoe filled with blood. Parents were frantically searching for their children.

Now I knew for sure it was a bomb. I ran out the door looking for my two brothers.
How could there be a bomb here?
in my church?
I could hardly comprehend such a thought. I had heard bombs go off in my neighborhood, but it seemed unfathomable that it could happen in this safe haven.

I looked up at the stained-glass Jesus window that stood above me and searched for the face that had always brought me such comfort, security, and peace. The window was intact, its glass unbroken . . . except . . . except for the face of Jesus. The bomb had cleanly blown away his face. Nothing else. Just his face.

* * *

Outside the building, a large number of black folks were angry. People from the neighborhood and the nearby boardinghouse had heard the commotion and were now pouring onto the church property. They were ready to fight.

“You bombed our church!” they screamed to no one in particular. “You hurt our people!”

They struggled to get through the police-enforced boundaries. They didn't know exactly who had set the dynamite, but they were desperate to get even, to strike out at someone—anyone.

As black residents paced outside the church, they ranted and threatened. “We can't let this pass!”

But no fights broke out. Police kept tight control on the people, on the ugly chaos. Pastor John Cross walked through the crowd with a megaphone, tears streaming down his face, and begged the crowd to be calm and nonviolent. “The Lord is our Shepherd,” the pastor called out. “We shall not want!”

Just then a thought hit me like a baseball bat.
My brothers! Where are my brothers?

I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could and run straight home.

But where are Wendell and Kirk? They are my responsibility. I can't go home without them.

Shouting their names, I dashed back into the building and began to search for them. Rubble and broken glass littered the floor, but I barely noticed. I was thinking only,
Where are those boys?
I paused at the women's restroom door but did not venture inside. It wasn't even recognizable as a restroom anymore—there was just a gaping hole piled up with dirt and bricks.

No, they wouldn't be in here. They hate girls!

Maybe they're still in their Sunday school room, where I dropped them off this morning
.
Or maybe they are hiding in the men's bathroom.

I checked both rooms. No boys.

They could be outside by now!

I stepped outside into the confusion and racket. I felt panicky. My brothers seemed to have disappeared.

Okay, one more time—the women's restroom. That might have been the only place the boys could find shelter.

As I leaned into the restroom doorway, all I could see was a huge pile of rubble, almost four feet high, in the middle of the tile floor. Ash. Dirt. Soot. And silence. No sound came from the rubble or from anywhere else in the room.
No one's in here
, I thought as I turned around and ran back outside.

In the midst of the confusion, I saw carloads of white people circling the church and then driving off with screeching tires. They were laughing and singing a little song: “Two, four, six, eight! We don't want to integrate!” I was frightened. My parents never preached hatred to us children. I could not understand this action—the height of evil.

To my relief, I saw my father across the street. He was behind a huge barricade, arguing with a police officer. He looked frantic. “Let me through!” he shouted to the officer. “I've got two children in there!” I was so glad to see him—that meant I could finally go home. I still didn't know at that point if anyone had been hurt, but I believed my dad would help me find my brothers.

Two children? No, Daddy, three!

Somehow my father managed to push through the barricade. I ran into his arms and screamed, “Daddy! I don't know where Wendell and Kirk are. I've looked everywhere. I can't find them!”

“It's okay, Carolyn,” my father shouted back above the racket. “Wendell's in the car. He's safe.”

“But what about Kirk?” I cried.

“I'm sure some of the church members took Kirk home with them.”

My father drove us home. When we turned into the driveway, we saw Mama standing anxiously at the front door.

“A man just called,” she told us. “He said, ‘I've got this little fella here with me. He won't turn me loose. He says his name is Kirk. I found your number in the phone book under “Maull.” If you can come get him, I'll keep him right with me until you get here.'”

My parents jumped in the car and hurried to find Kirk.

I later found out that after the bomb exploded, Kirk took off running outside. My brother grabbed the leg of the first person he saw—a man walking down the street—and held on tight. He absolutely refused to let go. Somehow the man got Kirk's last name out of him. Since only three Maulls were listed in the phone book, he found our number and called us.

Kirk became a quiet child after that September morning. He seemingly lost his desire for conversation. All his teachers told my parents, “Kirk's such a smart child, but he never talks.” I believe the bombing somehow damaged my little brother. He was never quite the same.

My brother Wendell took off running when the bomb exploded, too, and headed toward downtown. Driving back to the church from his weekend job, my father saw Wendell standing in the street. He stopped the car, hugged him tightly, and put the terrified boy in the car.

* * *

By noon that day, Mama and Daddy, Chester, Wendell, Kirk, Agnes, and I were sitting at home. Silent. Stunned. No one said anything. We knew a bomb had exploded in our church, but we didn't know why. In our own lonely silence, each of us tried to make some sense of it.

That afternoon, around one o'clock, Carole's mother, Mrs. Alpha Robertson, phoned Mama.

“Is your Carolyn at home?” she asked.

“Yes, Alpha,” Mama told her. “Carolyn is here with me.”

“Well,” she said, “if your Carolyn is home, maybe my Carole went home with somebody from church.”

That afternoon my family and I all stayed around the house, not talking about much of anything. No one mentioned the Cavalettes' meeting, but there was an unspoken understanding that we wouldn't meet that day. Everything just seemed to freeze in time.

Around four o'clock that afternoon the telephone again interrupted our silence. Mama answered, then told us the news she had just received.

“There were four girls in the restroom who never made it out,” she said. “They're all dead.” She touched me on the shoulder as she told me this news. Mama didn't cry, but she seemed very sad—a soft kind of sadness. She didn't say it, but I imagine she was grateful I was still alive—that all three of her children who were at church were alive. And I'm sure she was also thanking God for bringing her children home safely.

My mind was whirling.
In the restroom?
No, it can't be. I was just in there. I didn't see anyone. And I didn't hear anything.

“They found them buried under a pile of rubble,” Mama said.

“Who were they, Mama?” I asked.

“Addie, Denise, Carole, and Cynthia.”

No! No! No! It can't be!
I'd spoken to them seconds before the bomb exploded. I'd stood right there and talked with them.

“Some woman claims she saw Tommy Blanton's Chevrolet parked a block from the church around two o'clock this morning. Said she saw three white men in the car, and one of them was ‘Dynamite Bob' Chambliss.”

Little did I know that the loss of those girls was, ironically, the real beginning of hope for blacks and whites in Birmingham. Their blood—the “blood of the innocents”—had spilled on the hands of Birmingham's people. And now, finally, the whole world was watching.

Chapter 5

Life Is But a Vapor

* * *

Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

James 4:14

Four or more who were attending Sunday School at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on the day of Sorrow and Shame were killed. Their bodies were stacked up on top of each other like bales of hay from the crumbling ruins left by the dynamiting. They were girls. They were children. . . . Those who died in the September 15 bombing also died serving the Lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified. This will be an unforgettable day in our nation, in world history, in the new rebellion of which the Confederate flags seem to symbolize. Yet, if members of the Negro group pour into the churches on Sunday, stream to the voter-registration offices, make their dollars talk freedom, and build up a better leadership, those children might not have died in vain.

“Killers of the Innocents—Commentary,”
Birmingham World
, September 18, 1963

When the words came out of Mama’s mouth, I think my heart stopped beating. I could barely breathe. My whole body went suddenly numb.

“Addie? Denise? Carole? And
Cynthia
?” I asked.

Mama nodded.

“My best friend, Cynthia? Dead? Are you sure, Mama?”

Mama just nodded her head.

Images of Cynthia raced through my mind. We had planned to meet that very afternoon with the Cavalettes club members. This was the day we were going to pay for our matching caps and T-shirts.

Does this mean I won’t ever see her again or talk with her on the phone?

The girls are gone, dead.
I repeated the words over and over in my mind, as if trying to convince myself.
The girls are gone, dead.

Mentally I retraced my steps from that morning. With a jolt, I remembered the phone call. “Three minutes,” the male caller had said. In the aftermath, we learned that the bomb had blown a seven-foot-high, three-foot-deep hole in the restroom wall. It had also demolished the stairs—the steps I had climbed only seconds before the blast.

I struggled to let the awful news sink in.
My friends were lying dead under all that mess of rubble? They were there, under the debris in the bathroom?

Don’t think about it, Carolyn
, an inner voice warned.

But if I had stayed in the bathroom one minute longer to talk . . .

Put it out of your mind, Carolyn
, the voice urged.

Or if I had left my own Sunday school class just two minutes later . . .
I sucked in a breath.
I would have died in the bathroom with those girls.

My brush with death had been close. Terrifyingly close. The realization was too painful to mention out loud, and almost unbearable to think about.

I am alive and safe at home. But they are gone, dead.

* * *

It was several months before I found out that Sarah Collins, Addie’s sister, had also been in that restroom. Sarah later related to me her account of what happened that morning. “I couldn’t see anything,” she said. The flying glass had penetrated Sarah’s eyes. She ended up being hospitalized for two months, losing one eye completely and retaining only partial vision in the other. She would never be the same again.

A few moments after the blast, Sarah had called out for her sister: “Addie! Addie! Addie?” When she heard no response, she called out again, louder this time. “Addie!” Sarah imagined the other girls had run off and left her. She didn’t know they lay just a few feet from her . . . dead beneath the rubble.

Mr. Rutledge, a deacon in our church, heard Sarah’s cries and moans. He followed the sound of her voice and rushed into the restroom. He found Sarah entombed in debris, about five feet from the rest of the girls’ bodies. He lifted her up and carried her to a waiting ambulance outside. In the hospital that day, there was one glimmer of hope in the midst of so much tragedy: a little black girl with pieces of glass penetrating her face did not have to experience the same treatment my grandmother had just a few years earlier. Thanks to the courage of a white nurse named Jim Jones, the whites-only University Hospital admitted Addie, purposely and intentionally breaking segregation rules.

Two more deacons ran inside the restroom. They dug through the rubble with their bare hands. Other church members, however, stayed a good distance back. They were afraid to go into the restroom, assuming the Klan had prepared a second charge of dynamite and more deadly bombs would follow the first explosion after a crowd had formed.

While the deacons clawed at the pile of broken glass and bricks, Reverend prayed aloud that another bomb had not been planted and that God would keep them safe.

Soon someone saw a hand sticking out from the debris. They kept digging until they uncovered each girl. The girls lay lifeless on top of each other in a pile that resembled stacked-up firewood. One by one their bodies were lifted from the rubble.

From what I heard later, the blast had rendered the girls’ bodies unrecognizable. Cynthia’s head was dismembered from the rest of her body. Her family identified her by the birthstone ring found on her finger.

A large, sharp stone had embedded itself in Denise’s skull during the explosion. At the morgue, Denise’s mother removed the rock and took it home with her. She placed it in a glass case and kept it for years in the family’s photography studio.

Shortly after the bombing, the FBI summoned my friend Junie Collins to accompany them. Her parents weren’t home when the agents came, and since Junie was the oldest child in the family, it fell to her to assume adult-level responsibility. She thought she was going to see her sister, Addie, in the hospital. Instead, they took her to the morgue to identify Addie’s body. Junie later told me, “If my life depended on it, I couldn’t say
this
was my sister. But then I saw this little brown shoe—like a loafer—on her foot. And I knew it was Addie.”

I did not see the bodies, but in the coming days I read the paralyzing and chilling descriptions in the newspaper. I shook my head and covered my eyes, attempting to remove the horrible images from my mind. I didn’t want to know the gruesome details. But it was too late—over the long years since the bombing, the painful images have continued to recall themselves to me.

* * *

My family and I were in shock. Complete disbelief. Over the course of the evening—through phone calls, the radio, and the evening news—we pieced together what had happened that morning. The story surfaced in bits and pieces, like segments of a strange puzzle.

We sat at home in stunned silence.

Someone had turned on the television. We turned it off because we couldn’t continue to watch the news. I felt more frightened than ever. An air of woe and doom came over me. A voice inside my head kept telling me,
They missed you this time, Carolyn. But the girls are dead. You were there—you talked with them right before they died.

At that moment, the bombings in Birmingham took on a new twist for me. People were dead. And these were people I knew! The racial situation had now become very real and very personal.

My young, innocent mind made another powerful note: It happened in my church! Church had always been a special place, a haven where we worshiped God. It was
his
place—a spot reserved each week just for God.

My parents had drilled into our brains the sacredness of God’s house. “In church, we don’t run,” they explained with definite seriousness in their voices. “We don’t chew gum. We don’t eat food. We don’t talk loud. We don’t play. Church is a place where we show respect and reverence.”

Instead we had people planting bombs in our church and my friends dying there.

Until that moment, I had not understood the depth of the volatility between blacks and whites in Birmingham. I could not fathom the extent of the hatred some whites had for black people.

Oh, I knew about segregation, about the protests and marches down city streets, about black people trying to get the “whites only” and “coloreds” signs taken down from restroom doors, restaurants, train stations, and city buses. But I had always felt protected by my father, my grandfather, my brothers, and my church. Before September 15, 1963, I didn’t know to worry about dying because of my skin color. But the thought kept echoing and refused to leave my mind:
People will actually kill us over this! What is this thing about skin?

And I felt helpless because I was just a child and I couldn’t change anything.

* * *

That Sunday evening Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wired President Kennedy from Atlanta, telling him he was going to Birmingham to plead with blacks to remain nonviolent. He added that unless “immediate Federal steps are taken,” there will be “in Birmingham and Alabama the worst racial holocaust this Nation has ever seen.”
[8]
President Kennedy was yachting off Newport, Rhode Island, and was notified of the bombing by radiotelephone. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ordered his chief Civil Rights troubleshooter, Burke Marshall, to Birmingham, along with twenty-five FBI agents and bomb experts from Washington, D.C.
[9]

Dr. King also wired Governor George Wallace: “The blood of four little children . . . is on your hands,” he wrote. “Your irresponsible and misguided actions have created in Birmingham and Alabama the atmosphere that has induced continued violence and now murder.”
[10]

Twelve days later, on September 27,
Time
magazine placed on its front cover the steel-cold, angry face of Governor George Wallace with the inscription “Alabama: Civil Rights Battlefield.” In the background, the editors placed the photograph of the church’s stained-glass window with the kind face of Jesus blown clean away.

* * *

Before darkness fell on the night of September 15, the reverend and his deacons closed the front doors of the wonderful old Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. For the following eight months, the congregation met to worship in the nearby L. R. Hall Auditorium. Money and donations poured into the church from all over the world. Local contractor L. S. Gaillard worked hard to make the needed repairs to the church. He did everything he could to make it a sturdy building—a safe place for young black girls in white Sunday dresses to once again worship God.

Jesus’ stained-glass face was also remade and set back in the window. I have no idea why only Christ’s face was blown away in the explosion—I have to wonder if perhaps that’s just the way God allowed it to happen. Now, thanks to careful restoration, Jesus again looks down upon his congregation with kind, loving eyes.

But as a remembrance of that morning, the reverend and his deacons decided to leave two damaged things in the church untouched and unrepaired. One was the antique clock on the sanctuary wall. In the midst of the bombing, the old timepiece stayed attached to the wall, its glass case intact and undisturbed. But for some reason its faithful tick and accurate hands stopped dead at the exact moment of the blast—10:22. Nearly five decades later, the clock—in unmoving silence—tells the story to worshipers and to pilgrims who walk through the church doors.

The girls’ restroom—the place where the bomb exploded—has also remained frozen in time. After the bombing it was simply sealed up. A wall was built in front of the restroom door as if to say, “Forget that it happened!”

But some of us refuse to forget. We will forever worship on sacred and holy ground.

* * *

Slipping into bed that night, I felt sick. I was afraid to close my eyes. So I started to sing:

All along this Christian journey,

I want Jesus to walk with me.

I want Jesus to walk with me.

All along this Christian journey,

I want Jesus to walk with me.

In my troubles, walk with me.

When I’m dying, walk with me.

All along this Christian journey,

I want Jesus to walk with me.

I want Jesus to walk with me.

Is this going to continue?
I asked myself late that night as I scooted deeper under the blankets.
Will this wave of killing and bombs ever end?

The thought of death and bombs frightened me. I felt powerless to do anything about the hatred and violence in this city—my city.

My inner voice spoke loud and clear to me:
Carolyn, it’s not
if
you will get blown up and killed by a bomb, but
when
. It’s just a matter of time, and then it will be your turn. One day a bomb will explode, and you will not escape it. Like Denise, Addie, Carole, and Cynthia.

I finally drifted off into a troubled, restless sleep. Darkness engulfed Birmingham, Alabama, on that tragic day of sorrow and shame. And a heavy, incomprehensible dark cloud of depression and sadness settled over my own head and heart—a nightmarish web of memories that would hover over me for many years to come.

The following week I went to Fred Singleton’s sporting-goods store. With my saved-up money, I bought Cynthia’s gold cap and shirt. Her name, “Cynthia,” was printed in black letters on the front of the shirt, and the letter
C
, for Cavalettes, was printed on the back. I gave the cap and shirt to Cynthia’s mother, Mrs. Wesley. I realize now it was a small token, but it was my way of saying how important Cynthia was to me—to all of us. Almost five decades later, I still have my gold cap. It hurts me to look at it.

* * *

We had had unsolved bombings for years in my city. Bombs exploded, and the city of Birmingham went on with business as usual. No arrests were made, so there were no convictions. We heard no public apologies, few empathetic speeches from the white community. No one sent letters of righteous indignation or sympathy. A bomb exploded, and it proved just another day in the life of Birmingham Negroes.

We knew that on any day, at any time, a bomb might explode. After a blast the phone would ring, and the caller would tell us the bomb’s location. Our family would spend the rest of the evening quiet and somber, often in prayer, contemplating such a depth of hatred and depravity. Black people somehow adapted to the blasts—the destroyed homes, businesses, and churches. It was our way of life, a cross that each of us thought we had to bear.