Last year was a momentous time of commemoration for Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

Not only was it the 150^th anniversary of the predominantly Black church’s founding, just two years after Birmingham was officially established; it also marked the 60^th anniversary of the targeted, racial terrorist bombing of the church that killed four little girls during the height of the human rights campaign to end the city’s segregation laws.

Now the church, at the center of the modern civil rights struggle, is taking on a new campaign: to raise $7.5 million for a major expansion and restoration effort.

Church leaders announced the campaign last weekend. Donations will go toward preservation of the church’s historic building and construction of a new education and visitor center, as well as the creation of new, peace and social justice programming.

“The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church is a beacon of change, progress, open faith. From tragedies to triumphs, what happened here propelled the civil rights movement to reality,” Rev. Arthur Price Jr., the church’s pastor, said in a video announcing the capital campaign.

He said the new visitor center will be “a place of healing and reconciliation,” and with support from donors, the church “… can continue to change the world for the better.”

Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. (Michael Tomberlin / Alabama News Center)

The church’s historic building, completed in 1911, was designed by Wallace A. Rayfield, believed to be only the second formally trained, African-American architect in the United States. According to the church’s website, the modified Romanesque and Byzantine structure was built at a cost of $26,000 under the supervision of T.C. Windham, a black contractor from Birmingham who also served on the church’s board of trustees.

Leading up to and during the 1963 Birmingham civil rights campaign, the church served as a center for mass meetings and workshops where protestors, including local teenagers who took part in the famous Children’s Crusade, trained in nonviolent civil disobedience.

On the morning of Sunday, Sept. 15, 1963, a bomb placed on the east side of the church exploded, killing 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and 11-year-old Cynthia Wesley. Addie’s sister Sarah survived, but lost her right eye. Nearly two dozen others were injured. The bombing by members of the Ku Klux Klan took place as Birmingham was roiled by anti-integration protests as the first Black students entered formerly all-white schools across the city.

The murderous bombing shocked people across the globe, reinforcing the city’s notorious reputation as a place of racist hatred, and helping push forward passage by Congress of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, outlawing legal segregation nationwide.

The bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in 1963 killed four little girls and helped galvanize the civil rights movement. (Birmingham Public Library)

The church building is on the National Register of Historic Places and is one of the marquee sites within the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument.

The proposed, two-story, 13,000-square-foot multipurpose visitor center is designed to enhance the visitor experience and improve the church’s ability to handle large groups. It would be located just west of the church parsonage and include meeting and event spaces, a commercial kitchen and café, and a gift shop.

“This new building addition will symbolize the movement from a dark past to a new light of hope and vision for the entire community,” Price told Bham Now in November after a city panel approved the building’s design.

The fundraising campaign also will help support development of new programming and events to expand community and interfaith outreach, and education efforts tied to social and economic equity and justice issues. The Alabama Power Foundation is among the many organizations that has provided support to Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

“We are committed to preserving this important legacy and continuing the fight for social justice and equality for all people,” Price said.

For more information and to donate to the campaign, visit sixteenthstreetbaptist.org.