Were robbed of the chance to live full, amazing lives.
11 year old Denise McNair, and 14 year old Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins were getting ready for their church service just like any other Sunday at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. But white racist cowards with a dynamite bomb had other plans for that morning.
We're living in strange times where the past is being forgotten and re-written like a script to a television show. There are still so many lost chapters of the struggle for racial equality and civil rights and what people of color in the south truly struggled with under slavery and jim crow. In my own family there was a lost cousin...a promising young man who was violently denied his future after being lynched and mutilated by the klan. His death was never solved. No justice. No responsibility taken. But the message was as clear as it was deeply carved into his bloody chest when my father and his male relatives cut his body down from the tree: "Niggers, die". That pain still resonates deeply today. There is so much work that still needs to be done. Each and every one of us -- all races...all backgrounds -- have a part to play. If you have a child or children in your life, dare to sit down with them and talk about the story of these 4 little girls and how important it is that they never be forgotten. Dare to make a difference.
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