#OnThisDay in 1963, a bomb planted by white supremacists ripped through the 16th Street Baptist Church, in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four little girls—11-year-old Carol Denise McNair, and 14-year-olds Carole Robertson, Cynthia Diane Wesley and Addie Mae Collins—and injuring several others. The tragedy marked the third bombing in eleven days in Birmingham, Alabama following the federal order of Alabama school integration. Shards from the church's stained-glass window are on display in our exhibition "Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom: The Era of Segregation" as a reminder of this tragic incident. Racially motivated attacks on Black homes and churches grew so common that the city was referred to as “Bombingham.” For these reasons, African American civil rights activists made Birmingham a focal point of their desegregation campaign. Follow the link in our bio to learn more. #APeoplesJourney #ANationsStory 📸 1. Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons 2. Stained glass rosette shard from the 16th Street Baptist Church. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of the Family of Rev. Norman C. "Jim" Jimerson and Melva Brooks Jimerson 3. The damaged interior of the church is shown in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., Sunday, Sept. 15, 1963. (Tom Self/ Birmingham News) CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons