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Mother of girl killed 6

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 1 month ago

    Addie Mae slammed the door as she came in and shouted,"Guess what? I get to sing in the choir on Sunday in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church with Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley!" I replied,"Well, that's great, Addie Mae! Now when did y'all find this out?" "Just this afternoon, when I was walking home with my friends," she told me,"there was a poster on the door of the church saying we were supposed to help this Sunday." "Run along, now, I've got to cook dinner," I said and she ran off to join her friends wherever they were. After dinner, Addie Mae practiced her scales and chords and all that stuff until her younger brother, Lesley, scared her into stopping because he said that if she kept on singing all night, she would lose her voice and wouldn't be able to sing in the choir. That made her be real quiet.

    Next morning, Friday morning, Addie Mae tried to "conserve her vocal chords" as much as she could when she wasn't practicing. Since Lesley had always thought Addie Mae talked too much, he was loving it the whole time. To make her stop singing for a while, he even swiped Addie Mae's hymn book until I made him give it back. Addie Mae was really taking the whole vocal chord and losing her voice thing seriously! I convinced her to see her friends and she forgot all about losing her voice. Lesley wasn't too happy about it, though. Not much happened that afternoon, except Lesley decided it was a great idea to put his pet frog in Addie Mae's bedroom while she and her friend, Carole, where looking at their favorite magazines. The girls came screaming out of the house while I was in the garden and ran all the way to the end of our block. Lesley sure did give them a scare! When Addie Mae and Carole calmed down, they dumped all of Addie Mae's dirty laundry out the window in the area of the the backyard where Lesley was playing. I should have known Addie Mae wanted revenge, and before I could stop her, she sure got it!

    Saturday went by pretty quickly. Lesley spent the whole day playing jacks, checkers, and kickball with his friends so Addie Mae and I got a little bit of quiet before Addie Mae went off to practice her singing with the other girls. Addie Mae is so dedicated. She is really excited about her and her friends singing together in the Adult Service. It would be so sad if something happened and she couldn't sing...

    It was Sunday morning and I was trying to get Lesley to put on his best suit for Addie Mae's performance. I got it on him just in time to see Addie Mae off to church. She went earlier than the rest of us to "prepare" for the service, and talk to her friends. Lesley and I had a late breakfast before heading to church. But on the way to church, I heard a great big BOOM in the direction of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Not knowing what else to do, Lesley and I started running to see what had happened.

    We arrived at total devastation. Firefighters and policemen and ambulances were already at the scene. Smoke and dust was billowing upward from the church. I looked around for Addie Mae and her friends but didn't see her or her friends. Lesley and I asked around but no one had seen them. I was starting to get worried. Firefighters were digging around in the rubble for any people that might have been in the church when it was bombed. At first they found 22 people injured. When they got to where the basement had been, they pulled up the bodies of Denise, Carole, Cynthia, and Addie Mae. Addie Mae had died when the church had crashed down, along with three other girls. The girls had never gotten to sing. 

     The next few months Lesley and I were quiet and rarely went outside unless necessary. We felt empty inside but strangely closer as a family. Sometimes I felt really depressed and other times completely angry at the Klu Klux Klan who killed my daughter. Later I realized Addie Mae had been happy when she was in the church. Addie Mae had been with her friends and serving her community and God. All four of the girls had a funeral together and the minister mentioned all the good in their lives and didn't speak about the flaws, which I particularly appreciated. The day after the bombing the newspaper descibed how the church was destroyed. Apparently, Some of the Klu KLux Klan members had been so disgruntled with the new desegregation laws that they had planted 19 delayed-time release sticks of dynamite outside the window of the church's basement. Also, 5 cars were damaged and the windows of the laundromat across the street were completely blown out. Only one stained glass window was left intact. The window showed Jesus leading children, but Jesus' head was blown out, too. Roger Chambliss was charged with the murders, and was found with 116 sticks of dynamite without a permit. Chambliss was sentenced to many life terms in jail, and he deserved it. The case of the Birmingham Church Bombing was closed. (For a while anyway.....)

 

 

 

 

Author's note: Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley did die on September 15, 1963, in the Birmingham Church Bombing but it is unknown whether Addie Mae had a brother named Lesley or not. The case has been reopened many times since the bombing. When the court reopened the case in 2000, and Bobby Cherry and Thomas Blanton were also accused of the murder. They, too, were sentenced to many life terms in jail. Blanton's ex-wife testified,"He lit the fuse."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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