BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – The church where four black girls died in a racist bombing in 1963 was designated a national landmark on Monday.
Speaking at the pulpit of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales called the church “a catalyst for the cause of justice” as he referred to the children killed when a Ku Klux Klan bomb went off there on Sept. 15, 1963.
“We protect this place for them,” Gonzales said.
At the ceremony, Interior Secretary Gale Norton signed a proclamation adding the church to a list of about 2,500 places that carry the title of National Historic Landmark.
The audience included relatives of the four girls who were killed – Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, all 14, and Denise McNair, 11.
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was an important meeting place for activists during the civil rights era, and the bombing became a worldwide symbol illustrating the depth of racial hatred in the South at the time. Three Klansman were convicted in the blast, the last in 2002.
The bomb knocked out part of a wall and heavily damaged the restroom where the girls were.
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