background history to those names, as long as something has left something for a specific person, we can tell more about that person's life. i think that's the purpose of the collection. 100 years ago this past august, president wood row wilson created the national parks service. today we're feature national and historic sites. this is america history tv, only on c-span3. the 16th treat baptist church was built had 187 is, and was called the first baptist church for colored people. it moved to this site around 1883, and moved here because of the land that it was on

previously was co-opted by the city, and they moved the church here, and this land had a lot of red clay on it, so they move here 1883, called 16th street baptist church, renamed it from the sell baptist church for the colored folks. we are told it was a beautiful church, and we're told the power structure said no black church needs to be that beautiful, so they turned the steeple down. a member of the church designed the church we're in now. it was also a place for social gatherings, because in the jim crow south african-americans couldn't go to the alabama theater or a civic center, to a club or party house, so many of the events were socially brought to 16th street.

it came not only a place for spiritual formation, but a place for social activity as well. 1960s this became the quote/unquote headquarters of the children march, operation c. dr. martin luther king was solicited to come to birmingham, after a couple failed campaigns, particularly the one in albany, georgia, and they wanted to confronted power structure here in birmingham. he was already unsuccessful in enrolling his children in phillips high school. as a matter of fact he was beaten very badly when he try to do enroll his kids to the high school, so they began to meet here in april and may on mondays, and they would strategize in the behavioral, come up to a packed house, and

then go out into the park, democrat freight, confronting bull connor and the power structure to desegregate. the church bombing happened months after the whole operation. the demonstrations, the water hoses, the dogs in the park happened after dr. king's famous "i have a dream" speech. 18 days after that speech, a bomb went off in this church. ironically the sunday school lesson that day was a love where you give. and it was kids -- two girls were killed, and one girl was blinded in one eye by the shrapnel. the congregation against was shocked that somebody would bomb a church. the 11:00 -- or the sunday morning hour was supposed to be the most sacred, the place where you are sending your kids to

learn the golden rule, to learning about different attitudes on how to treat your neighbor right, on a say when you are learning a less done that a love that forgives, it was shock and awe that somebody would actually ball a church, a sanctuary, a safe haven. it was shock and awe, and the xhurcht i think there was a lot of introspecs shun, what are we doing? what did we sign up for? we don't want blacks and whites to go to school together, that was apparent, but we didn't sign up for murder and terrorism, which there was a september 15th of 1963. two were convicted, but we

believe there were more conspired, but they were the ones that were actually caught. as a matter of fact cherry was one of the perpetrators that actually beat that actually beat reverend shuttlesworth when he was trying to enroll his kids in the high school and they have that on tape and his niece was talking about how they were conspiring to bomb the church. so that's pretty much how they convicted him but it was some 14 years later. then 30 years later after that after the bombing to get bobby frank cherry. the church had to go through a lot of -- i guess a lot of rebuilding because some people blame the pastor for allowing the marches and the movement and the church. so he wound up leaving, then the

church had a history of going through pastors. it had resolved and the way the church rebuilds was going back to the basics. putting their focus on jesus christ, making him the center of their attraction. surrounding the activities around what christ would have us to do and we began to focus on our mission and mandate from the savior. there's plenty ways that church remembered each year we have a memorial service on september 15th at 10:22 the time the actual bomb went off. we just added the marker. where the bomb went off at to commemorate the girls and we did a 3.8 campaign to restore the church so that people would always know this is the place where four girls lost their lives that regalvanized the

civil rights movement that red to the civil rights act being passed and the voting act being passed as well. tragedy can turn into triumph. justice delayed is not justice denied and the rights we have as individuals today maybe freed us but cost four individuals their lives to gain those freedomals. >> american history tv is featuring historic sights and national parks from c-span's city tour. check out our website, cspan .org/cities tour. only on c-span 3. meina allender was the writr for the national party. contributing over 150