A History of the Civil Rights Movement

FEDERAL LAWS PROTECT CIVIL RIGHTS

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Members of CORE lead a march in Washington, D.C., to draw attention to violence in the South. The photo they are carrying shows the 16th Street Baptist Church, where a bomb planted by white supremacists killed four young black girls in September 1963.

King’s dream of peaceful integration seemed far off, however, as the vio lence resistance to integration continued throughout 1963. On September 15, 1963, four members of the Ku Klux Klan set off a bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, where King and others had planned the Birmingham campaign in the spring. Four young girls—11-year-old Denise McNair and 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley—were killed and 22 others were injured. It was the 27th bombing in Birmingham that year. The bombers would not be brought to justice for decades. FREEDOM SUMMER A year after the March on Washington, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee began a major effort to register black voters in