Photo: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift from the Trumpauer-Mulholland Collection.
Just two weeks after the March On Washington, on September 15, 1963, white supremacists planted a bomb under the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The explosion killed four young girls attending Sunday school.
This terrorist act was a brutal reminder that the success of the march and the changes it represented would not go unchallenged. In the face of such violence, the determination to continue organizing intensified. These glass shards are from the church’s stained-glass window.
