While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age during the Civil Rights Movement

As McKinstry walked into the sanctuary on September 15, 1963, she heard a loud boom and felt the building shake. At first, she mistook the sound for thunder. The Ku Klux Klan often detonated bombs in Birmingham, but it didn’t sound like any of the bombs that McKinstry had heard before. Glass shattered, and someone shouted to McKinstry to get on the ground. She crouched down, afraid, as silence filled the church. After 10 seconds, she heard feet below her as people rushed to vacate the church’s basement. McKinstry ran outside to see the church surrounded by police cars. There was chaos and confusion as people searched for their loved ones, and McKinstry tried to understand how a bomb could have detonated in the “safe haven” of her church. Looking up, McKinstry saw that the stained-glass window in the front of the church was still intact, except for the face of Jesus, which had been “cleanly blown away.”

Black people from around the neighborhood gathered and shouted angrily, demanding that someone pay for the violence. Suddenly, McKinstry remembered her brothers in the basement for their Sunday school classes. She rushed inside to search for them, pausing in front of the women’s bathroom, which was reduced to a pile of rubble.