Daughters of Birmingham: Reflections on the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombings

On September 15, 1963, a bombing carried out by members of the Ku Klux Klan at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, instantly killed Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Carole Rosamond Robinson, and Cynthia Dionne Morris Wesley. Also in the room was Addie Mae\'s younger sister, 12-year-old Sarah Collins, who survived the blast and valiantly tried to rescue her sister, but was blinded by shattered glass. For decades, Sarah slipped into anonymity-but her story lives on in her latest memoir The 5th Little Girl: Soul Survivor of the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing (The Sarah Collins Rudolph Story).\r\n\r\nLisa McNair was born one year after her older sister, Denise, was murdered in the bombings. Her book Dear Denise is a collection of forty letters from Lisa addressed to the sister she never knew, but in whose shadow of sacrifice and lost youth she was raised. Both accounts offer an intimate look into the lives of two women who carry the weight of history, and two families touched by one of the most heinous tragedies of the Civil Rights Movement.