This story is part of a series of articles, “Bending Toward Justice,” focusing on the 60th anniversary of events that took place in Birmingham during 1963 that changed the face of the city, and the world, in the ongoing struggle for equality and human rights. The series name is a reference to a quote by Martin Luther King Jr.: “Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” The series will continue through 2023.

President John F. Kennedy expressed “outrage” and “grief” on Sept. 16, 1963, one day after Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was bombed, killing Cynthia Diane Wesley, 14; Carol Denise McNair, 11; Carole Rosamond Robertson, 14; and Addie Mae Collins, 14.

In a statement, he said, “I know I speak on behalf of all Americans in expressing a deep sense of outrage and grief over the killing of the children yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama. It is regrettable that public disparagement of law and order has encouraged violence which has fallen on the innocent. If these cruel and tragic events can only awaken that city and state – if they can only awaken this entire nation – to a realization of the folly of racial injustice and hatred and violence, then it is not too late for all concerned to unite in steps toward peaceful progress before more lives are lost.”

After the bombing, Birmingham took on the appearance of a battle zone, with 300 state troopers, 450 police officers, 150 sheriff’s deputies and 300 federalized National Guardsmen patrolling the streets.

Besides the deaths of Wesley, McNair, Robertson and Collins in the church bombing, Virgil Ware, 14, also died that day after being shot at the hands of two young white men while another Black youth, Johnny Robinson, was shot in the back and killed by police for throwing rocks to protest the church bombing.

On Tuesday, Sept. 17, 1963, a funeral was held for Carole Rosamond Robertson before 450 people, including 50 white people, at St. John’s A.M.E. Church. The Rev. John Cross said the church bomber “did not only bomb the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, did not only kill these lovely, innocent girls, but somehow the whole world was shaken. People everywhere died.”

Pallbearers at the services for three of the four little girls murdered in the racial terror bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. (Alabama Department of Archives and History, donated by Alabama Media Group, photo by Vernon Merritt, Birmingham News)

Words of the Apostle Paul were used as the text of Carole’s eulogy. “All things work together for the good of them that love the Lord. Accept those words,” Cross told Carole’s family, seated in six pews just to the right of the pulpit. Carole’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Alvin Robertson, sat on the front row. She was their third child.

On Wednesday, Sept. 18, 1963, three coffins covered with floral arrangements were the focal point for a sea of somber faces that filled every available spot at Sixth Avenue Baptist Church. Services for three of the four girls crushed to death in the Sunday morning bombing just three days earlier brought out a crowd that numbered in the thousands.

An hour before services began, mourners and spectators were in balconies and Sunday school rooms. The main body of the church was reserved for families and friends of Cynthia Dianne Wesley, Addie Mae Collins and Carol Denise McNair. Long after the 2,000-seat church was filled to capacity, people continued to crowd into the aisles and alongside corridors. More than 200 ministers, about half of them white people, sat in a place reserved in the back of the church auditorium. An estimated crowd of 6,000 were inside and outside the church.

The funeral for three of the four little girls murdered in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. (Alabama Department of Archives and History, donated by Alabama Media Group, photo by Vernon Merritt, Birmingham News)

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., speaking from the black-cloth-draped pulpit, called the girls “the modern heroines of a holy crusade.”

He said, “We must not harbor the desire to retaliate with violence. We must not lose faith with our white brothers.”

King predicted the deaths “may well serve as the redemptive force that brings light to this dark city … may cause the white South to come to terms with its conscience.”

Revs. Martin Luther King Jr. and Fred Shuttlesworth at the funeral of three of the four little girls murdered in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. (Alabama Department of Archives and History, donated by Alabama Media Group, photo by Vernon Merritt, Birmingham News)

After the service, an estimated 4,000 people outside the church watched as the coffins and families emerged into the late afternoon sunlight, one at a time. The three hearses moved away slowly through the masses, the people parting to let them and the families through.

Cynthia and Addie Mae were buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, Denise at Shadow Lawn Cemetery, where her friend, Carole, had been buried that Tuesday.

This story originally appeared in The Birmingham Times.