04/19/2026
It’s been a minute since I’ve shared here, but this felt important.
Today marks the 153rd anniversary of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.
Yesterday, my family and I walked through the Civil Rights District:
- Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
- Kelly Ingram Park
- A. G. Gaston Motel
- and the church itself
It’s hard to walk through these places and not feel something.
It’s even harder to comprehend that it wasn’t that long ago.
In 1963, just 63 years ago, four little girls were killed in a bombing: at that church:
Addie Mae Collins
Denise McNair
Carole Robertson
Cynthia Wesley
They were in the basement restroom.
Getting ready for Sunday. Youth Sunday at the church.
Just being teenage girls.
A fifth girl, Sarah Collins Rudolph, survived, but lost an eye and endured a lifetime of surgeries.
And on that same day, two young boys were also killed in separate acts of racial violence:
- Johnny Robinson, shot by police
- Virgil Ware, killed by white teenagers
Six children. One day.
This happened just weeks after the March on Washington...where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.
At the funeral for three of the girls, he said:
“They say to each of us… that we must substitute courage for caution.”
A line that stays with you if you let it in.
Yesterday felt different.
It wasn’t just about what happened…
it was the silence around it.
The lack of people willing to stand up and say:
This is wrong.
This isn’t who we are as humans.
J. Edgar Hoover had evidence tied to the bombing early on, but no charges were filed at the time.
It took 14 years for the first conviction.
Decades more for the others. 39 to be exact.
Those men lived full lives.
The families of those girls endured a lifetime without them.
Walking through Kelly Ingram Park… you can feel it.
There’s a weight that stays with you.
But what impacted me most wasn’t just what we saw.
It was how our kids experienced it.
C1 is starting to connect what she sees in the world today with what happened then.
C2 spent an hour in the car trying to figure out which of her grandparents were alive in 1963...and how old they were.
I don’t even know why. Maybe curiosity. Maybe trying to understand proximity.
But it mattered to her.
And that’s what mattered.
Our conversations weren’t just about what happened.
We talked about courage.
About doing what’s right...even when it’s uncomfortable.
About the fact that bravery doesn’t always have to be loud.
And about seeing people as people. All people.
And then something small, but not really small at all.
A man named Jonathan, who works at the church, gave my oldest a copy of "The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963" and a button.
Just because.
It’s a moment she’ll remember forever.
One small gesture that will stay with her.
If you’re my age or younger and you’ve never heard their names...look them up.
Sit in it.
Remember what had to happen before a nation started to pay attention.
And don’t forget.
Because these stories aren’t that old.
And we bear a responsibility to 'substitute courage for caution.'
