BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the site of a 1963 bombing that killed four girls, has become a National Historic Landmark. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, speaking from the church’s pulpit, said the downtown church now serves as hope for churches destroyed recently in a string of arsons. “This is one of the proudest moments in our nation’s history,” Norton said Feb. 20, after signing the proclamation that gives Sixteenth Street Baptist the nation’s highest historic distinction.
Norton was joined by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; Donald Murphy, the National Park Service’s deputy director; and Arthur Price, the church’s pastor, as she made the designation official. Relatives of the four girls killed in the bombing attended the ceremony. The church, founded in 1873 as the First Colored Baptist Church, moved into its current building in 1911 and served as a key gathering place for civil rights rallies in the 1960s. A bomb planted Sept. 15, 1963, exploded at the church, killing Denise McNair, 11, and 14-year-olds Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins. The girls were in a basement ladies lounge preparing for a Sunday youth program. The bombing brought national attention and outrage, helping to bring the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Three former Klansmen were convicted in the bombing.
National status protects the church from being destroyed for any federal project. Fewer than 2,500 places have the distinction.
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