40th Anniversary of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing

40TH ANNIVERSARY OF SIXTEENTH STREET BAPTIST CHURCH BOMBING -- (House of Representatives - October 06, 2004)

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Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Alabama for giving us the opportunity to honor the memories of Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley. These four girls were killed over 40 years ago in the firebombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. I would also like to commend the efforts of the Alabama Attorney General's Office for its role in prosecuting the perpetrators of this evil and cowardly act of terror.

The Sixteenth Street Church, a rallying point for the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, was firebombed. Let us honor the memory of these girls by ensuring their sacrifice was not in vain. Let us work to bring about Martin Luther King's color-blind America. Let us not forget that although we have come a long way, there is still much further to go.

Since this incident, which occurred in the lifetime of most of my colleagues in the House, our country has changed profoundly. Black parents can thankfully now send their children to church knowing that the chances of them being murdered by segregationists is not that great. Sadly, they cannot send their children to school confident in the belief that they will be educated or safe. Instead, many of them must fear they will fall prey to the drugs and violence that plague our inner city schools and inner city communities. They may fear they will fall prey to poverty, as 4 million additional families did last year. Or that they, like 45 million Americans, will not have access to health care. I hope that these problems can be addressed as rapidly as earlier problems were during the Civil Rights movement.

So, Mr. Speaker, this day gives us the opportunity to celebrate lives that were lost, but also to ensure and make sure that those lives were not in vain.