16th Street Baptist Church

16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama

The three-story 16th Street Baptist Church was a rallying point for civil-rights activities. In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, the church's Youth Day, Ku Klux Klan members Bobby Frank Cherry and Robert Edward Chambliss (also called "Dynamite Bob") planted 19 sticks of dynamite in the basement of the church killing four young black girls: Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Carole Robertson (14), and Carol Denise McNair (11). It was a turning point in the U.S. civil-rights movement of the mid-20th century.