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Birmingham Bombing

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Birmingham Bombing
Michael Reynolds
English 101 001
Dr. Roger West
May 13, 2013
The sixteenth street Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama used for meetings to protesting the cities unwillingness to desegregate it’s public schools on September 15 1963 a bomb exploded during Sunday school killing Denise McNair, Caroline Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Addie Mae Collins, it would be fourteen years before anyone was even charged with the crime and many more before all were brought to justice. On that same day Governor George Wallace sent five hundred national guards men, 300 hundred state troopers and offered a five thousand dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the bombings personally resisted federal desegregation laws by banning blacks from attending public Universities, Elementary and Secondary schools and was opposed to any segregation between black and whites students US president John F. Kennedy having made promises to civil rights leaders prior to his election was hesitant to pursue an active civil rights plan after sit-ins, freedom rides and racial violence in the south escalated was no longer satisfied with his approach. Five months earlier Dr. Martin Luther King was arrested for not having a parade permit and wrote letters from the Birmingham jail to eight white Clergymen stressing nonviolent action against business men of the city on that day sent a telegram to President Kennedy stating that if immediate steps weren’t take by the Federal Government the worst racial holocaust the nation had ever seen would erupt in Birmingham. Those were some troubling times and Alabama was always in the thick of racial violence there were some fifty bombings between the years of 1947 and 1965 giving the city the prominent name of bombingham. The reason for the bombing and the escalation of violence started long before in the town of Topeka, Kansas sure before then many people were killed most innocent both black and white was


Cited: "Alabama." The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather guide. Abington: Helicon, 2010. Credo Reference. Web. 14 May 2013 Civil Rights: Birmingham Bomb Kills 4." Facts On File World News Digest: n. pag. World News Digest. Facts On File News Services, 18 Sept. 1963. Web. 14 May 2013. Eskew, Glenn T. "`Bombingham ': Black Protest In Postwar Birmingham, Alabama." Historian 59.2 (1997): 371. History Reference Center. Web. 15 May 2013 Letter from Birmingham Jail." The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Houghton Mifflin. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. Credo Reference. Web. 15 May 2013. Wallace, George." Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2010. Credo Reference. Web. 16 May 2013. "John F. Kennedy: Civil Rights Message, June 11, 1963." Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches. Jackson: Perseus, 2003. Credo Reference. Web. 16 May 2013. Last Suspect in 1963 Alabama Church Bombing Found Guilty; Ex-Klansman Cherry Sentenced to Life." Facts On File World News Digest: n. pag. World News Digest. Facts On File News Services, 23 May 2002. Web. 20 May 2013. .
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