A Glimpse of the Beloved Community

"I don't know what's going on," the boy said to his young companion, shaking his head, "but the church is filling up with white people." I was looking at pictures of Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, and Carole Robertson when I overheard his comment on a hot Friday evening last July. In the basement of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, is a memorial to these four girls.

It was September 15, 1963, Youth Sunday, when they lost their lives there. Just a few months before, the church had been at the center of the struggle for desegregation in Birmingham. The fight had been won largely due to the courage of children.

The attention of the world became riveted on Birmingham when Police Commissioner Bull Connor unleashed vicious dogs and water cannons as they marched for freedom. Public pressure forced city officials to reform harsh segregation laws. Birmingham's children had made history.

They were about to be brought to the world's attention again. It was 10:22 a.m. The Sunday School hour was just finishing. The girls were in the ladies' lounge, getting ready to serve in the choir and as ushers for the church service. A few feet away, planted below a staircase along the outside wall of the church, a bomb exploded.

Eighteen days earlier, Martin Luther King Jr. had delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Now, at the funeral service for four schoolchildren, he said: "God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. The innocent blood of these little girls may well serve as the redemptive force that will bring new light to this dark city....Indeed, this tragic event may cause the white South to come to terms with its conscience."

THE MAGIC CITY. The Tragic City. The Johannesburg of America. The Most Segregated City in America. Bombingham. Birmingham.

To stand outside Sixteenth Street Baptist Church--next to the new Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, and across from Kelly Ingram Park, where many of the freedom marches originated--is to stand at an intersection of history. In the institute, you can view footage of the children's march, freedom rides, and lunch counter sit-ins. You can touch the door of the jail cell where Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his famous "Letter From a Birmingham Jail," and hear in his own voice his plea for justice: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny...."

The Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America (BPFNA) chose this city as the site for its annual gathering in July as a sign of repentance and hope. Thirty years after the bombing, peace-loving Baptists from the United States and Canada converged for a week-long conference. It culminated with a Friday evening service at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who had been at the heart of the civil rights struggle, and whose home had also been the target of a bomb 30 years ago, preached the sermon. Carlton Reece, who was the "minister of music" for the Birmingham movement and the author of several freedom songs, led the singing.

During the service Ken Sehested, the executive director of the Baptist Peace Fellowship, presented a check to Rev. Chris Hamlin of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, as an act of repentance and reparation. The check was accompanied by the "Birmingham Confession," a statement circulated by BPFNA and signed by people from all across the continent.

It recounted more of the tragic history surrounding the bombing. The week after the four girls died, the Southern Baptist Convention's executive committee met in a scheduled session in Nashville. A resolution to express grief and solidarity failed. The 1993 Birmingham Confession acknowledged "our own historic complicity with racism," calling the failure 30 years ago of Baptist leaders to speak out against the violence "not simply an administrative mistake but a sin against the Holy Spirit." It asked for forgiveness, and included a pledge to work for the vision of the "beloved community."

I WAS SITTING next to 84-year-old Flora Smith in the church, which was overflowing with BPFNA participants as well as church members. She gave me a copy of a newspaper article from 1963. It explained that a conviction against her had been overturned. She told me the story.

The day before Mother's Day in 1963, she woke up and told herself, "I'm going to go to jail today, and be somebody's mother tomorrow." She packed her bag with a toothbrush and her white dress and headed downtown.

During the march from the park, she broke away and went to the steps of city hall. "Since I had a Bible, they didn't stop me," she said. "I just bowed down and started praying."

She was eventually arrested for blocking the sidewalk and spent eight days in jail, where she coordinated devotions and Bible studies for the other women there. Five months later, her conviction was overturned when the court redefined "sidewalk" so as not to include the city hall steps.

Flora Smith's grandfather was a slave. She was orphaned at age 9 and only finished seventh grade. But in 1983, when she was 74 years old, she enrolled in Miles College in Birmingham, where the BPFNA conference was being held. Five years later, she became the college's oldest graduate. "I was so proud," she said, "I went to my room and wept."

I looked over at her as the strains of "Oh Freedom" filled the sanctuary. Her hands were folded, and her eyes were looking toward heaven. Her face looked transcendent, with a glow of dignity and pride. She was the first person to stand when the congregation began singing "We Shall Overcome." Arms crossed and hands clasped around the sanctuary.

When the singing was done, I asked her if in 1963 she ever thought that 30 years later blacks and whites would be sitting in that church together singing freedom songs. Tears welled in her eyes as she said, "Praise the good Lord, I never thought I'd see this day."

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.