Today is the 50th anniversary of the Sixteenth Street Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four young girls (Carole Robertson, Denise McNair, Cynthia Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins) and injured others (including Addie Mae Collins' sister). The bombing is actually mentioned in Coming of Age in Mississippi, which I'm reading now. But I wanted to write about it because I think about it every time the anniversary of the bombing rolls around. I think it affects me so much because I was around the girls' age when I first heard about the bombing (I was twelve, and read an article in Essence by Angela Davis) and because my own mother was in the girls' age bracket at the time when the bombing occurred. When I first heard about it, I was a little shocked that I had reached adolescence and had never heard about it before (this was before Spike Lee's documentary about the bombing, Four Little Girls, was released). It makes me sad and angry that these young lives (and so many others) were snuffed out just to preserve the idea of inequality and hatred. But I have to believe that these young ladies did not die in vain. That their deaths "awoke the sleeping giant" and inspired others to fight for their equality. In his poem "If We Must Die," Claude McKay wrote, "If we must die, O let us nobly die,/So that our precious blood may not be shed/In vain."
Rest in peace, girls. You've inspired me more than you know.
No comments:
Post a Comment