One September day in 1963, a bullhorn, a forgiving heart and a well-known Scripture helped prevent a riot.
The place: Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham — then often called “Bombingham” because of the frequency of racially motivated bombings in the city’s black neighborhoods. The time: between Sunday School and the worship service. The speaker: Rev. John Cross. The words: Psalm 23.
The minister’s daughter, Barbara, was one of the children concluding Sunday School classes in the church basement when the bomb went off. Though she is now over the fear associated with that day, she still remembers it vividly.
‘The most devastating day’
“That was the most devastating day of my life. To this day, if I hear loud noises, it bothers me, because I remember that sound, the boom! I’ll never forget it. It’s like the building shook,” she remembered.
Young Barbara was excited when her father accepted the call to serve as pastor of Sixteenth Street Baptist in June 1962. But the family had no idea how different it would be there than Richmond, Virginia.
When Rev. Cross got to Birmingham, he tried to catch a cab.
“A driver said to him, ‘We do not haul your kind.’ My dad said, ‘Before I leave Birmingham, you will haul whoever wants to catch your cab,’” Barbara Cross recalled.
“He couldn’t stay in hotels or motels because they were segregated. We had a member of Sixteenth Street who allowed my dad to stay with him. Then we moved into the parsonage until they found us a place to stay.”
During his first year in Birmingham, John Cross opened up the church to be not only a place to hear the gospel, but a meeting place to propel the Civil Rights cause. He allowed Martin Luther King Jr. to use the church, making it a target.
On the morning of Sept. 15, 1963, Rev. Cross was upstairs with the women’s Sunday School class in the choir loft when he heard the explosion. His wife wasn’t feeling well that day, so she was home. Approximately 40 children, including 14-year-old Barbara, were downstairs getting ready for the annual youth day when they would lead the worship service.
Barbara Cross’s first thought when she heard the bomb was that it was a nuclear attack, having heard about the Cuban missile crisis while participating in civil defense drills at school. Neither she nor her siblings were aware of the bomb threats, having been shielded by their parents.
However, Rev. Cross was well aware of those threats. When he smelled the fumes, he knew what had happened. He tried to get people out, but the steps on the side of the building had been blown away.
“When he came around to the side of the church, that’s when he saw the gaping hole. It was so wide that you could almost drive a Hummer through it,” Barbara Cross recalled. “When he went through the rubble, he said, ‘Oh Lord, I hope there’s nobody under that rubble.’ That’s when they found the four girls. He said, ‘It was like they was [sic] blown together.’”
Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins (all 14) and Carol Denise McNair (11) died under that rubble. About 20 other members of the congregation were injured … and angry.
‘We just need to pray’
One member wanted to lash out, but Rev. Cross held her hands and told her, “We don’t answer violence with violence. We just need to pray.”
Barbara said that, with tears streaming down his face, he found a bullhorn and quoted Psalm 23. The crowd calmed down.
“Years later schoolchildren would innocently ask, ‘Ms. Cross, do you hate the bomber that killed your friends?’ I said, ‘No. We weren’t taught to hate. But I dislike what they did.’”
One of her favorite scriptures is Luke 23:34: “Father, forgive them. For they know not what they do.” The principle has helped her to live a life of thankfulness, even though she still mourns the losses.
“In fact, the Sunday School lesson that day was, ‘The Love that Forgives.’ How ironic and appropriate that we would have to draw on the strength of that lesson based on what happened at Sixteenth Street.
The bombing was a horrific event, but it could have been a whole lot worse, Barbara Cross said. “Thank God it didn’t flatten the church and more people weren’t killed. So that’s the blessing.
“If I had to do this all over again and know the outcome, for the children, I wouldn’t want that to happen, no,” she said. “But I thank God that He spared me. I don’t know why He spared me because I was in the basement. I’m just blessed that I can share the history and share the story, especially about the lesson of that day, ‘the love that forgives.’”
Share with others: