Ten shards of stained glass

Source catalog description

This description refers to material held by Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Visual details below describe the original material.

Just two weeks after the march, on September 15, 1963, white supremacists planted a bomb under the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The explosion killed four young girls attending Sunday school. This terrorist act was a brutal reminder that the success of the march and the changes it represented would not go unchallenged. In the face of such violence, the determination to continue organizing intensified. These glass shards are from the church's stained-glass window. A collection of glass shards collected from the gutter outside the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, at the funeral of the four girls killed in the bombing.

Catalog date

September 1963

Recorded places

Birmingham, Jefferson County, Alabama, United States, North and Central America

Recorded subjects

African American; Baptist; Civil Rights; Hate crimes; The Black Church; U.S. History, 1961-1969; Violence

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