Fearing the worst: a church is bombed. A daughter is missing. A rediscovered photograph recalls one of the most heart-wrenching episodes of the civil rights era.(INDELIBLE IMAGES)(Sixteenth Street Baptist Church)

Publication: Smithsonian

Publication Date: 01-MAY-06

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2006 Smithsonian Institution

IT IS A MOMENT that divides before and after. Less than 24 hours earlier, the two sisters at the center of the photograph were worrying over house curtains. Now they fear that the 11-year-old daughter and only child of Maxine Pippen McNair (center, right) lies across the street, buried in the rubble of what had been the ladies' lounge of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

Sunday, September 15, 1963, was the most sensational day yet in a city historically embarrassed by dubious superlatives; Birmingham, which called itself the "City of Churches," was also known as the most segregated city in America. Maxine's daughter, Denise McNair, and three friends had been primping for their role in Youth Day services when dynamite planted by Ku Klux Klansmen blasted them into history.

When the photograph was taken, the family knew only that Denise was...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.