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Newsela | Primary Sources: A Sermon on Lynching by Reverend Dr. Howard E. Jones

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Obama picks 1st African-American and woman to head Library of Congress

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Carla Hayden, head of Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library, was chosen librarian of Congress. If the Senate approves her, she will be the first African-American and first woman in the job.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Malcolm X added a radicalized voice to the civil rights movement and was a leader within the Nation of Islam, but he was assassinated in 1965 after breaking away from the organization.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Freedom songs were important to the voting rights march in Selma, Alabama

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March 2015 is the 50th anniversary of the famous march. A movie about it has a stirring song by the rapper Common. It shows how important songs were to the movement. They still are.

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Newsela | Primary Sources: A Free Man's Letter to a Former Slaveowner, 1865

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Freed slave sends letter to former "master" in 1865.

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Newsela | Essay: Martin Luther King Jr., a timely leader

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Teacher and author Jim Haskins writes about Martin Luther King Jr., a leader in the American civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

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Newsela | 150 years after Lincoln's assassination, equality is still a struggle

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | The Little Rock Nine students are a permanent part of U.S. history

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Minnijean Brown was just a teenager looking forward to high school when she became a part of U.S. history as one of the Little Rock Nine.

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Primary Sources: Washington Sells a Runaway Slave to the West Indies

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George Washington's letter requesting the sale of a slave.

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FBI reports hate crimes rose 17% in 2017

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Hate crime incidents reported to the FBI increased by about 17% last year compared to 2016, according to statistics released Tuesday by the FBI.

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Newsela | "The brilliant Iola": Journalist Ida B. Wells an early civil rights leader

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Before the American civil rights movement, journalist Ida B. Wells was already writing articles that fought for the rights of African-Americans and women.

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Newsela | Living his dream: A new generation fights for rights King envisioned

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In fighting for racial equality and social justice during turbulent times, young people across the United States are working to keep Dr. King's dream alive.

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Newsela | The other '68: Black power during Reconstruction

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Newsela | Linda Brown, central figure in school segregation case, dies

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Linda Brown, the center of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down racial segregation in schools, died on March 25 at age 75.

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Newsela | Primary Sources: Universal Declaration of Human Rights

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Human rights are universal and are to be given to all people regardless of who they are

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Subscribe to the https://soundslikehate.org/">Sounds Like Hate podcast to learn more about hate groups like the Proud Boys.​

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Newsela | "Betty Before X" tells the story of civil rights leader Betty Shabazz

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Daughter of civil rights leader Malcolm X writes about the childhood of her mother, Betty Shabazz, a social justice leader in her own right.

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | The months-long campaign that drove historic black turnout in Alabama

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Owing in large part to a historic black turnout in Alabama, Democratic candidate Doug Jones won a surprise victory over Republican opponent Roy Moore.

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Newsela | 150 years after Lincoln's assassination, equality is still a struggle

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Songs of African-American Migration Were Influential Across the Land

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Many genres of American music have been influenced by the African-American songs throughout history.

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Newsela | Primary Sources: Benjamin Banneker's Letter to Thomas Jefferson

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"We are a race that has long suffered the abuse and disapproval of the world."

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Newsela | FBI says hate crime rate climbs as Jews, Muslims, LGBTs mostly targeted

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Newsela | A forgotten story: Black women helped land a man on the moon

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Newsela | Latina photographer who captured civil rights movement receives exhibition

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A new exhibit opens in Chicago featuring work by Latina photographer Maria Varela, who was present for many monumental moments in the civil rights movement.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Separate but Equal no Longer: Ending School Segregation in the U.S.

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Newsela | 150 years after Lincoln's assassination, equality is still a struggle

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Newsela | Primary Sources: Olaudah Equiano describes the Middle Passage, 1780s

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Taken from his country, robbed of his culture, and separated from his family

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Newsela - Dylann Roof receives death penalty for hate-crime murders in Charleston

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Mass murderer to receive death penalty for hate crime.

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Newsela | Five years on: Recalling Trayvon Martin and the birth of Black Lives Matter

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Stirred to action five years ago, many people maintain the message will not die out.

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Newsela | John Lewis blends '60s tactics, social media in new chapter of activism

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Congressman uses old tactics in new activism

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Newsela | 1945 to the Present: The Sixties

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Newsela | Elizabeth Greenfield challenged whites to accept black musical talent

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Newsela | Primary Sources: Plessy v. Ferguson

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Majority rule in favor of "separate but equal" segregated facilities

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Newsela | White nationalist rally in Virginia leaves 3 dead, many injured

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Newsela | 150 years after Lincoln's assassination, equality is still a struggle

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Taking it to the streets: Grassroots activism in the United States

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Activism and movements for a cause have had many faces throughout the years.

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Citation: C N Trueman "The Black Panthers"
historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, . .

The Black Panthers were formed in California in 1966 and they played a short but important part in the civil rights movement. The Black Panthers believed that the non-violent campaign of Martin Luther King had failed and any promised changes to their lifestyle via the 'traditional' civil rights movement, would take too long to be implemented or simply not introduced.

The language of the Black Panthers was violent as was their public stance. The two founders of the Black Panther Party were Huey Percy Newton and Bobby Seale. They preached for a "revolutionary war" but though they considered themselves an African-American party, they were willing to speak out for all those who were oppressed from whatever minority group. They were willing to use violence to get what they wanted.

The Black Panther Party (BPP) had four desires : equality in education, housing, employment and civil rights. It had a 10 Point Plan to get its desired goals.

The ten points of the party platform were:
1) "Freedom; the power to determine the destiny of the Black and oppressed communities. 2) Full Employment; give every person employment or guaranteed income. 3) End to robbery of Black communities; the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules as promised to ex-slaves during the reconstruction period following the emancipation of slavery. 4) Decent housing fit for the shelter of human beings; the land should be made into cooperatives so that the people can build. 5) Education for the people; that teaches the true history of Blacks and their role in present day society. 6) Free health care; health facilities which will develop preventive medical programs. 7) End to police brutality and murder of Black people and other people of color and oppressed people. 8) End to all wars of aggression; the various conflicts which exist stem directly from the United States ruling circle. 9) Freedom for all political prisoners; trials by juries that represent our peers. 10) Land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and community control of modern industry."
The call for a revolutionary war against authority at the time of the Vietnam War, alerted the FBI to the Black Panther's activities. Whatever happened, the FBI was successful in destroying the Black Panther's movement.

Those who supported the BPP claim that the FBI used dirty tactics such as forging letters to provoke conflict between the BPP's leaders; organising the murders of BPP leaders such as John Huggins; initiating a "Black Propaganda" campaign to convince the public that the BPP was a threat to national security; using infiltrators to commit crimes that could be blamed on the BPP so that leaders could be arrested and writing threatening letters to jurors during trials so that the BPP would be blamed for attempting to pervert the course of justice. Supporters of the BPP claimed that this last tactic was used with success at the trial of the "Chicago Eight" whereby the jury, apparently angered at being intimidated by the BPP, found the eight members of the BPP guilty. None of the above tactics have ever been proved or admitted to by the FBI.

In California, the party leader of Oakland, David Hilliard, claimed that the BPP was at the top of the FBI's most wanted list. Hilliard also claimed that the then governor of California, Ronald Reagan, constantly vilified the BPP:

"This caused a stigma to be placed upon the Black Panther Party as Pied Pipers of cultural and social revolution characterising us as the essence of violence, chaos and evil."

The head of the FBI, Edgar J Hoover, called the BPP "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country." Hoover ordered field operatives of the FBI to introduce measures that would cripple the BPP. Using infiltrators (one of these, William O'Neal, became Chief of Security for the BPP), the FBI knew of all the movements etc of BPP leaders. FBI raids in BPP heartlands - Chicago and Los Angeles - that led to the arrest of regional leaders, resulted in the collapse of the movement.

To view the BPP as a purely revolutionary and violent movement is wrong. In areas of support the BPP created a Free Food Program to feed those who could not afford to do so for themselves; Free Medical Research Health Clinics to provide basic health care for those who could not afford it and an Intercommunal Youth Band to give community pride to the movement. In a book of his essays called "To Die for the People", Huey Newton wrote that these were exactly what the African-American community wanted and that the BPP was providing its own people with something the government was not. Such community projects have survived in other guises, but after the demise of the BPP they lost their drive for a number of years.

Was there much support for the BPP? Were they 'Public Enemy Number One' as Hoover claimed? In 1966, a survey carried out in America showed that less than 5% of African-Americans approved of groups such as the BPP. 60% were positively hostile to such groups. But were these survey results slanted in such a manner as to tarnish the name of the Black Panthers at an early stage in its existence especially as the head of the FBI, Hoover, was known to be very against the movement? In areas such as Oakland and parts of San Francisco and South San Francisco where the BPP claimed to feed nearly 200,000 people, support would have been a lot higher.

Further Reading:

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The Black Panthers - History Learning Site

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The Black Panthers The Black Panthers were formed in California in 1966 and they played a short but important part in the civil rights movement. The Black Panthers believed that the non-violent campaign of Martin Luther King had failed and any promised changes to their lifestyle via the 'traditional' civil rights movement, would take too long ...

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Newsela | Primary Sources: Brown v. Board of Education

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Newsela | Aretha Franklin, the "Queen of Soul," dies at 76

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The great American singer Aretha Franklin, known as the "Queen of Soul," died on August 16 at age 76.

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Newsela | Primary Sources: Jefferson's Notes on Slavery

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Newsela | Civil rights icon Huerta has advice for a new generation of activists

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Newsela | Underground Railroad leader Harriet Tubman to appear on U.S. $20 bill

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Opinion: Civil rights activists ramp up their use of highways for protests

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Contents

1. Black Panthers Origins and History

2. Political Activities And Social Programs

3. Black Panthers Violence And Controversies

4. The FBI And COINTELPRO

5. New Black Panther Party

The Black Panthers, also known as the Black Panther Party, was a political organization founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale to challenge police brutality against the African American community.

Dressed in black berets and black leather jackets, the Black Panthers organized armed citizen patrols of Oakland and other U.S. cities. At its peak in 1968, the Black Panther Party had roughly 2,000 members. The organization later declined as a result of internal tensions, deadly shootouts and FBI counterintelligence activities aimed at weakening the organization.

Black Panthers Origins and History

Black Panther Party founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale met in 1961 while students at Merritt College in Oakland, California.

They both protested the college's "Pioneer Day" celebration, which honored the pioneers who came to California in the 1800s, but omitted the role of African Americans in settling the American West. Seale and Newton formed the Negro History Fact Group, which called on the school to offer classes in Black history.

They founded the Black Panthers in the wake of the assassination of Black nationalist Malcolm X and after police in San Francisco shot and killed an unarmed Black teen named Matthew Johnson.

Originally dubbed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the organization was founded in October 1966. The Black Panthers' early activities primarily involved monitoring police activities in Black communities in Oakland and other cities.

As they instituted a number of social programs and engaged in political activities, their popularity grew. The Black Panthers drew widespread support from urban centers with large minority communities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. By 1968, the Black Panthers had roughly 2,000 members across the country.
READ MORE: How the Black Power Movement Influenced the Civil Rights Movement
Political Activities And Social Programs

Newton and Seale drew on Marxist ideology for the party platform. They outlined the organization's philosophical views and political objectives in a Ten-Point Program.

The Ten-Point Program called for an immediate end to police brutality; employment for African Americans; and land, housing and justice for all.

The Black Panthers were part of the larger Black Power movement, which emphasized Black pride, community control and unification for civil rights.

While the Black Panthers were often portrayed as a gang, their leadership saw the organization as a political party whose goal was getting more African Americans elected to political office. They were unsuccessful on this front. By the early 1970s, FBI counterintelligence efforts, criminal activities and an internal rift between group members weakened the party as a political force.

The Black Panthers did, however, start a number of popular community social programs, including free breakfast programs for school children and free health clinics in 13 African American communities across the United States.

Black Panthers Violence And Controversies

The Black Panthers were involved in numerous violent encounters with police. In 1967, founder Huey Newton allegedly killed Oakland police officer John Frey. Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in 1968 and was sentenced to two to 15 years in prison. An appellate court decision later reversed the conviction.

Eldridge Cleaver, editor of the Black Panther's newspaper, and 17-year old Black Panther member and treasurer Bobby Hutton, were involved in a shootout with police in 1968 that left Hutton dead and two police officers wounded.

Conflicts within the party often turned violent too. In 1969, Black Panther Party member Alex Rackley was tortured and murdered by other Black Panthers who thought he was a police informant.

Black Panther bookkeeper Betty Van Patter was found beaten and murdered in 1974. No one was charged with the death, though many believed that party leadership was responsible.

The FBI And COINTELPRO

The Black Panthers' socialist message and black nationalist focus made them the target of a secret FBI counterintelligence program called COINTELPRO.

In 1969, the FBI declared the Black Panthers a communist organization and an enemy of the United States government. The first FBI's first director, J. Edgar Hoover, in 1968 called the Black Panthers, "One of the greatest threats to the nation's internal security."

The FBI worked to weaken the Panthers by exploited existing rivalries between black nationalist groups. They also worked to undermine and dismantle the Free Breakfast for Children Program and other community social programs instituted by the Black Panthers.
READ MORE: How the Black Panthers' Breakfast Program Both Inspired and Threatened the Government
In 1969, Chicago police gunned down and killed Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, who were asleep in their apartment.

About a hundred bullets were fired in what police described as a fierce gun battle with members of the Black Panther Party. However, ballistics experts later determined that only one of those bullets came from the Panthers' side.

Although the FBI was not responsible for leading the raid, a federal grand jury later indicated that the bureau played a significant role in the events leading up to the raid.

The Black Panther Party officially dissolved in 1982.

New Black Panther Party

The New Black Panther Party is a black nationalist organization founded in Dallas, Texas, in 1989. Members of the original Black Panther Party say there's no relation between the New Black Panther Party and the original Black Panthers.

The United States Commission on Civil Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center have called the New Black Panther Party a hate group.

Sources

5 things to know about the Black Panthers. USA Today.
Black Panther Party. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Black Panthers: Revolutionaries, free breakfast pioneers.

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The Black Panthers made up a political organization founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale to challenge police brutality against African Americans. Dressed in black berets and black leather jackets, the Black Panthers organized armed citizen patrols of Oakland and other U.S. cities.

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Newsela | 150 years after Lincoln's assassination, equality is still a struggle

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Newsela | Beyoncé's performance breathes new life into "black national anthem"

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The song "Lift Every Voice and Sing" has renewed significance in the Black Lives Matter era.

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Newsela | Primary Sources: The Declaration of Independence

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Harriet Tubman gets a new home along the Underground Railroad

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A new visitor center will open at Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park in Maryland.

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Newsela | 150 years after Lincoln's assassination, equality is still a struggle

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Newsela | Freedom songs were important to the voting rights march in Selma, Alabama

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March 2015 is the 50th anniversary of the famous march. A movie about it has a stirring song by the rapper Common. It shows how important songs were to the movement. They still are.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | John Legend, Juanes visit jail, sing out against immigration laws

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John Legend, Juanes make immigration plea

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Virginia high school suspends students who wore Confederate flag clothing

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In Virginia, 23 high school students were suspended for wearing clothes with images of the Confederate battle flag. The students say the dress code violates their freedom of speech.

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Living his dream: A new generation fights for rights King envisioned

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In fighting for racial equality and social justice during turbulent times, young people across the United States are working to keep Dr. King's dream alive.

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Newsela | A congressman writes a comic book about his work in the civil rights era

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John Lewis is a congressman from Georgia. As a young man, he helped lead the civil rights movement. He wrote a comic book to bring the history of the movement to life for students.

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Black Panther Party Pieces of History: 1966 - 1969

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Stories, pictures and information about the alumni members, community workers, rank and file of the Black Panther Party.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Primary Sources: The Constitution of the United States of America

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Newsela - U.S. sees sharp rise in number of whites troubled by racism, polls show

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Newsela | Expansion & Reform: Black Women and the Abolition of Slavery

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How black women helped to shape black freedom.

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Newsela | Opinion: Civil rights activists ramp up their use of highways for protests

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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When you mention the 1960s Black Panther Movement to those who are old enough to remember, the chances are great that it conjures images of beret wearing, angry revolutionaries with big Afros and guns.

What often gets lost in their story is their program to provide free breakfast for school children. Born in their Oakland, California headquarters in 1968, it was one of the first organized school breakfast food programs in the country.

This fall, a new documentary, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, traces the roots of the Black Panther movement and the impact of its rise and fall on society.

The Panthers' breakfast offering came at a pivotal time for America: 1968 was a turning point in the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were both gunned down. There was a changing of the guard of sorts, from nonviolent protest for equality to the long, hot summer of riots in black communities all over the country.

In Oakland, the Black Panthers brought a new message of self-determination. The message caught on and their programs quickly spread to black communities across the country, tired of waiting to be saved or treated with equity.

By the end of 1969, the Black Panthers were serving full free breakfasts (including milk, bacon, eggs, grits, and toast) to 20,000 school aged children in 19 cities around the country, and in 23 local affiliates every school day.

Flores Forbes, author of Will You Die With Me, a book about his years as a Black Panther, says he worked in the breakfast program, cooking, serving the children and cleaning up. "We had a lot of jobs," Forbes says.

Forbes says that most of the funding for the program came from donations from within the communities being served. "We got support from local stores, churches, and groceries," Forbes says. The Panthers believed in the importance of education, and of kids showing up at school full and ready to learn, he says.

Bobby Seale, one of the founders of the Black Panther Party, said at the time: "There are millions of people who are living below subsistence; welfare mothers, poor white people, Mexican-Americans, Chicano peoples, Latinos, and black people."

The breakfast program gave the Black Panthers an anchor to talk about something that seldom made the headlines in America-hunger and poverty.

Forbes says that the breakfast program was just one of many programs the Panthers ran to address the needs of the poor. In fact, they developed more that 60 Serve the People programs, including efforts to provide free clothing and shoes, medical services -including drug and alcohol awareness, -legal aid education, and what was thought to be some of the first true early childhood education programs in the nation, preceding Head Start.

But the Pantheres' image and focus on self-determination drew the attention of then FBI chief, J. Edgar Hoover. He singled out the Black Panthers as national hate group, and the breakfast program as an act of subversion.

Forbes says that they were an easy target, "because the public wanted to believe that we were just thugs with leather jackets and guns."

Hoover perpetuated that image when he declared all out war on the Black Panthers. In May of 1969 Hoover sent a memo to all FBI offices that read:

"The BCP (Breakfast for Children Program) promotes at least tacit support for the Black Panther Party among naive individuals and, what is more distressing, it provides the BPP with a ready audience composed of highly impressionable youths. Consequently, the BCP represents the best and most influential activity going for the BPP and, as such, is potentially the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for."

Once Hoover went after the Breakfast Program, the handwriting was on the wall. Even though the organizers were careful to consult with nutritionists to make sure the children got high quality, balanced meals, and made sure they had the necessary permits from the health and fire departments for the kitchens and halls where they served meals, they became regular targets of local officials. The children they served were caught in the middle.

But after the Black Panther Party and its programs were summarily dismantled, the Breakfast for Children program found new life and a new champion in the federal government.

While President Harry Truman established the National School Lunch Act in 1946 to offer free or reduced cost lunches at school, it wasn't until 1975 that the government formally added the School Breakfast Program to its offerings to support vulnerable children.

Inspired in part by the ideas and actions of the Black Panthers in the 1960s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture started the School Breakfast Program . It now feeds nearly 13 million students every single day.
Andrea King Collier is a Michigan-based journalist and the new creative director of The Symposium for Professional Food Writers. Find her on Twitter.

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The Black Panthers: Revolutionaries, Free Breakfast Pioneers

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When you mention the 1960s Black Panther Movement to those who are old enough to remember, the chances are great that it conjures images of beret wearing, angry revolutionaries with big Afros and guns. What often gets lost in their story is their program to provide free breakfast for school children.

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Newsela | Obama calls for economic equality on anniversary of civil rights march

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Saying that "no one can match King's brilliance," President Obama paid tribute to the civil rights leader on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

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Newsela | Primary Sources: Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation

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Newsela | Images of hate: Nazi and Confederate flags in defeat faced different fate

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Newsela | Primary Sources: Excerpts from Harriet Jacobs' Slave Narrative, Part One

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Newsela | Famous Speeches: Cesar Chavez's Lessons of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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Nina Simone To Billie Holiday: 10 Civil Rights Protest Songs

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The Civil Rights movement incorporated jazz, folk, R&B and gospel in its music to help change America in the 1950s and 1960s.

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Newsela | Primary Sources: The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

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Newsela | Shooting at historic South Carolina church leaves 9 dead

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Gunman arrested in church shooting; 9 dead

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Newsela | Primary Sources: Excerpts from Harriet Jacobs' Slave Narrative, Part Two

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Harriet Jacobs was a slave who escaped to the North and became a writer and abolitionist

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Newsela | Remembering the March on Washington, and King's historic speech

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The March on Washington, during which King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, happened 50 years ago. Thousands gathered to remember, and continue the struggle for justice.

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Table of Contents

1. Birmingham in the 1960s

2. Letter from a Birmingham Jail

3. th Street Baptist Church

4. Aftermath of the Birmingham Church Bombing

5. Lasting Impact of the Birmingham Church Bombing

The Birmingham church bombing occurred on September 15, 1963, when a bomb exploded before Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama-a church with a predominantly Black congregation that also served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders. Four young girls were killed and many other people injured. Outrage over the incident and the violent clash between protesters and police that followed helped draw national attention to the hard-fought, often-dangerous struggle for civil rights for African Americans.

Birmingham in the 1960s

The city of Birmingham, Alabama, was founded in 1871 and rapidly became the state's most important industrial and commercial center. As late as the 1960s, however, it was also one of America's most racially discriminatory and segregated cities.

Alabama Governor George Wallace was a leading foe of desegregation, and Birmingham had one of the strongest and most violent chapters of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The city's police commissioner, Eugene "Bull" Connor, was notorious for his willingness to use brutality in combating radical demonstrators, union members and any Black citizens.

Did you know? By 1963, homemade bombs set off in Birmingham's Black homes and churches were such common occurrences that the city had earned the nickname "Bombingham."

Precisely because of its reputation as a stronghold for white supremacy, civil rights activists made Birmingham a major focus of their efforts to desegregate the Deep South.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail

In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. had been arrested there while leading supporters of his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in a nonviolent campaign of demonstrations against segregation. While in jail, King wrote a letter to local white ministers justifying his decision not to call off the demonstrations in the face of continued bloodshed at the hands of local law enforcement officials.

His famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" was published in the national press, along with shocking images of police brutality against protesters in Birmingham that helped build widespread support for the civil rights cause.

16th Street Baptist Church

Many of the civil rights protest marches that took place in Birmingham during the 1960s began at the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church, which had long been a significant religious center for the city's Black population and a routine meeting place for civil rights organizers like King.

KKK members had routinely called in bomb threats intended to disrupt civil rights meetings as well as services at the church.

At 10:22 a.m. on the morning of September 15, 1963, some 200 church members were in the building-many attending Sunday school classes before the start of the 11 am service-when the bomb detonated on the church's east side, spraying mortar and bricks from the front of the church and caving in its interior walls.

Most parishioners were able to evacuate the building as it filled with smoke, but the bodies of four young girls (14-year-old Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson and 11-year-old Denise McNair) were found beneath the rubble in a basement restroom.

Ten-year-old Sarah Collins, who was also in the restroom at the time of the explosion, lost her right eye, and more than 20 other people were injured in the blast.

The bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church on September 15 was the third bombing in 11 days, after a federal court order had come down mandating the integration of Alabama's school system.

Aftermath of the Birmingham Church Bombing

In the aftermath of the bombing, thousands of angry Black protesters gathered at the scene of the bombing. When Governor Wallace sent police and state troopers to break the protests up, violence broke out across the city; a number of protesters were arrested, and two young African American men were killed (one by police) before the National Guard was called in to restore order.

King later spoke before 8,000 people at the funeral for three of the girls (the family of the fourth girl held a smaller private service), fueling the public outrage now mounting across the country.

Though Birmingham's white supremacists (and even certain individuals) were immediately suspected in the bombing, repeated calls for the perpetrators to be brought to justice went unanswered for more than a decade. It was later revealed that the FBI had information concerning the identity of the bombers by 1965 and did nothing. ( J. Edgar Hoover, then-head of the FBI, disapproved of the civil rights movement; he died in 1972.)

In 1977, Alabama Attorney General Bob Baxley reopened the investigation and Klan leader Robert E. Chambliss was brought to trial for the bombings and convicted of murder. Continuing to maintain his innocence, Chambliss died in prison in 1985.

The case was again reopened in 1980, 1988 and 1997, when two other former Klan members, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry, were finally brought to trial; Blanton was convicted in 2001 and Cherry in 2002. A fourth suspect, Herman Frank Cash, died in 1994 before he could be brought to trial.

Lasting Impact of the Birmingham Church Bombing

Even though the legal system was slow to provide justice, the effect of the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church was immediate and significant.

Outrage over the death of the four young girls helped build increased support behind the continuing struggle to end segregation-support that would help lead to the passage of both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In that important sense, the bombing's impact was exactly the opposite of what its perpetrators had intended.

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The Birmingham church bombing occurred on September 15, 1963, when a bomb exploded before Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama-a church with a predominantly Black congregation that also served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders. Four young girls were killed and many other people injured.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | 150 years after Lincoln's assassination, equality is still a struggle