16th Street Baptist Church And Hatred

The Incident

On Sunday, September 15, 1963, four young African-American girls, Addie Mae Collins (age 14), Denise McNair (age 11), Carole Robertson (age 14), and Cynthia Wesley (age 14), were murder by the Klu Klux Klan in a racially motivated act of terrorism in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.  Bobby Frank Cherry, Thomas Blanton, Herman Frank Cash, and Robert Chambliss, members of United Klans of America, a Ku Klux Klan group, planted the box of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the church, near the basement that murdered these innocent children.

“Bombingham”: The untold forgotten story

During the 1950s, as the civil rights movement gained momentum, local white supremacists led by members of the KKK reacted fiercely and violently. It was during this period that the city of Birmingham, Alabama became known as “Bombingham” due to the numerous bombs set off at black churches and at homes of black activists — and attacks against whites who sought to upset the status quo.

Caught in the middle of all this was the relatively small Jewish community, which endured harsh anti-Semitic rhetoric by the Klan and white supremacists. I was only ten years old and I was in Sunday school at Temple Emanu-El on Highland Avenue when the blast occurred at the Church. I can still vividly remember that as a seven year old Jew and a member of the kindergarten at Temple Beth-El in 1958. I nearly met the same fate as those young African-American children at the hands of those very same hate-filled members of the Klu Klux Klan. 

The bomber, Klansman Frank Cherry and his fellow Klansmen accomplishes, used the very same bombing method in the horrific bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963 as was used in an attempted bombing by the Klu Klux Klan five years earlier at Temple Beth-El on Sunday April 28, 1958.

The bomb was comprised of 54 sticks of dynamite bundled into a canvas satchel. It had been planted sometime in the darkness of that early Monday morning, had been drenched in a heavy rain. Birmingham Police Investigators later found that, due to the dampness from the heavy rains, the 20-foot fuse had fizzled out with less than a minute before it would have detonated. From the stand point of time I can only state that the hand of God was definitely on our side that fateful day. The words "What if" still remains in my mind.

I remember how Karl “Bubba” Freidman and Sol Kimerling both related to me the story about the bomb found at Temple Beth-El. Both of them acknowledged that if the tremendously destructive bomb had gone off, the explosion would have demolished the entire Temple Beth-El and done extensive damage to nearby structures. According to the Birmingham Police Investigators and the FBI the explosive charge found at Temple Beth El was three times more powerful than the one that was used to kill the four young African-American girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963!

 
On July of 1958 The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr had stated that;

"Emboldened by the obvious lack of prosecution for the 1956 bombing of Temple Beth El the Baptist Church, the dynamiters recently crossed the color line and (attempted to) bomb a Jewish Synagogue.”

King continued by stating;

"Prejudiced minds, may regard this lightly and try to dismiss it as involving “only Negroes and Jews.” But this plague will surely spread unless city and state officials take stern and vigorous action to ferret out and punish both those who traffic in the sale of explosives for criminal use and those who use them. No human lives have been destroyed, as yet; but Divine Providence will not always intervene."

In my memory I can still remember being hurriedly led out of the Kindergarten building to the parking lot that chilly morning. I remember the cold and the dampness as we were hurried out the side door after the temple's janitor, James Pruitt, had found the bomb. It had been planted in a basement window on the eastern wall of the school part of the Temple. Just like the bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church five years later.

In a letter from my “Uncle Bubba” from the 20^th of February 2006 he relayed to me that his wife Glady’s sister Ida Mae Seligman and his daughter Lolly were also in the Temple building. My "uncle Bubba" also disclosed to me that he had been informed from "sources" at that time that the Klansmen; William Hugh Morris  , Police Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor and fellow white supremacist lawyer Jesse Benjamin "J.B."Stoner were behind the bombing attempt. 

J. B. Stoner was an unapologetic racist and virulent anti-Semite whose conviction for bombing a church, divisive political campaigns and vituperation's about Jews and blacks made him a benchmark for racial extremism in the United States. Stoner had once said that; "being a Jew [should] be a crime punishable by death"

In his letter to me “Uncle Bubba” relayed to me, how he went to speak at a memorial service for the African-American Civil Rights Lawyer Arthur Shores and how he had gone through the civil rights struggles together at the same time and that many Jews were involved in the march for civil rights.

I read with interest the articles from the Birmingham Federation Newsletter about Rabbi Milton Grafman, who was the Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham; from 1941 until his retirement in 1975 and then served as Rabbi Emeritus from 1975 until his death in 1995,  and his stand for Civil Rights and his backing of the Negro community in his writings;  “A Call For Unity” and An Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense .

I also remember Reverend King’s replies in his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail

The two most outstanding points of: "An Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense", which was issued by ten prominent members of the local clergy together with Rabbi Grafman, in which they affirmed basic principles of equality, justice and free speech, but also the need to obey current law, in my opinion are:

• That hatred and violence have no sanction in our religious and political traditions.
• That no person's freedom is safe unless every person's freedom is equally protected

I can remember Rabbi Grafman urging us at Temple Emanu-El not to give in to fear in a city suffering from moral apathy:

"You cannot yield to terror and violence….If you yield once you yield a second time [and] you yield a third time. And then there is nothing more to yield…you have already been captured."“I’m just sick at heart as you are about what’s happened in our city. I have been sick about it for years. Anybody with a shred of humanity in him could not have been but horrified by what happened Saturday or Sunday.”"And I’m sick at heart for a lot of other reasons. I’m sick at heart because of the attitude not of the people who either by direction or indirection were responsible for the death of those children…I’m sick at heart because of what the so-called nice people…the liberals … that sneer at everything that happens put the blame upon everyone but themselves. I am sick at heart (at) their attitude also. I am sick of and tired of finger pointing. I am weary of reasons and rationalizations. And I am weary of people congregating in their homes and their places of business over their coffee, wherever they may be…I answer to my conscience. You’ll have to answer to yours.”

Above all I remember Rabbi Grafman's words from the pulpit that September 19th, Rosh Hashana morning in 1963:

“And let me say these people are primarily anti-Semitic and this is where you have got a stake. Because let me tell you, if they get away with this, nobody’s going to be safe and the first ones that will not be safe, will be the members of the Jewish community…”

How prophetic these words of his words spoken then are today 

Epilogue:

 
I was recently made aware of an excellent article in the Southern Jewish life Magazine with an in depth and comprehensive background of that sad period in American history, the letter by Martin Luther King and the harsh unjust criticism of Rabbi Grafman's response at that time. Specifically from those who did not know the whole truth and background of the whole affair. Rabbi Grafman was a giant among humanitarians and few know of his works and efforts on the part of the community.