and history of each city we visit. website,re, go to our c-span.org, and click on series, and then click on c-span cities tour. historyn's american tour next friday focuses on native americans. we start off with the battle of the little bighorn, also known as custer's last and. stand. last floridah mission in devoted to converting native americans to christianity. more now from c-span stewart of the people, places and events of the civil rights movement. in 1963, the ku klux klan bombed the 16th street apt is church in birmingham alabama, killing four african-american girls. was in the carolyn mome

church, but she was not hurt heard she shares her memories of that day with c-span. >> what i remember, when the bomb exploded, i remember not really thinking that it was a bomb. had was thatught i it was thunder or something. the sound made me think of thu nder. as soon as i thought that, the windows came crashing in. i heard someone inside the church they hit the floor. floor, ill on the could tell after a few seconds, i could hear feet. i could tell people were getting up and running out. my first thought was for those two younger brothers that i had brought with me, i knew that before i could leave or go to to safety i would need to figure out where they were. i went outside and searched downstairs and upstairs and was

never able to find my brothers there at the church. we would find them later in a different part of the community. september 15 started as a very routine day. it was sunday morning. i was trying to coax my sister into getting her hair combed. finally, my mother said justly for here. i will bring her later with me. so my two younger brothers, alan me. wedell left with arrived right about 9:30. after putting them in their classes, i went upstairs to the to gather my equipment, i guess i could call it, but i was responsible for taking attendance and i was responsible for recording the financial giving for the day. in creating a summary report that i would give later. i did this, collected all of

these reports, passed them out. and i sat in my sunday school class for a while. then generally around 9:15 i would get -- i would collect those reports and create the summary. on this particular sunday, we were very excited. although young people were excited because it was youth sunday. that meant we were in charge of everything. ,e sang, we gave the devotion we did ushering, we did everything. we were excited about that. as i started up the stairs to complete those reports, i passed the place where my friends were. i spoke to them and they were talking and everyone was excited in their own way about different things. i did not linger there because of the report and as i started up the steps, when i reached the top, the phone was ringing in the church office. in those days, the church office was right behind the sanctuary. the church office

and heard the phone ring, i went in and answered it. mrs. shorter who are work under was not there and the male caller on the other hand said three minutes. as quickly as he said that, he hung up. arms,l had my items in my my materials, and i turned and walked out into the sanctuary and only because we had counted it, i know that i took about 15 steps before the bomb exploded. thing yous the last had said to them before you left them in the bathroom? >> see you later, when i pass the bathroom. last thing i said, see you later. birmingham was a very segregated place during that time. difficult, dark and difficult place during that time. as a young person, probably prior to the age of 14, we did not experience a lot of the difficult days.

our parents did such a great job of sheltering us. many of our activities were provided for us while here at the church and in the schools so that we did not miss the places that we could not go with the places we were not allowed to go . they provided picnics and swimming parties and contests and all kinds of activities right here at the church. we did not really know to what extent we were missing a lot of things. i think that our parents did not want us to know that there were out beyondstrictions the home parameters. so for many things, they just didn't tell us about it, they sheltered us. when they opened the first fast , rather than allow us to know that they did not serve black people, rather than have us go to a side window when they did serve them, they just kept

us at home and they always told us that it was about money, that they didn't have the money to do these things. in a real way, we did not know many of the barriers that existed out there. it was a real gift in a lot of ways not knowing that the barriers were there. there were no imaginary barriers in our mind saying we can't do it to cause those people are this person, we really grew up thinking that we could do anything that we wanted third we could be anyone we wanted to be. this was just a lot in my elementary school and high school. i guess they felt we would find out soon enough what things were possible and what things were not. but they really did a tremendous job of preparing us so that if the opportunities came, we would be ready. church was just heartbroken.

they were young, innocent girls. they had not been part of the movement. they had not serve in any way but that. they had the full life ahead of them. they were all very bright, very andt young girls in school until -- into the cases they were the only children. denise and cynthia were the only children that their parents had. the church was really shocked that we had people in our city who were willing not only to kill young children in the name of segregation, but to bomb the house of worship to maintain that. church away from our about eight months during the renovation. we have many members who did not come back heard some did not come back because they were afraid. they thought it would happen again or something new would happen. some did not come back just because they thought the church would continuously be having

mass meetings and so forth. weould venture to say probably had half the congregation return after the renovation. the church reacted very strongly to what happened there. it was a very painful experience. you that prior to this experience, i was just a young girl growing up in a house with four brothers who picked on me a lot, but life was good. parents.y loving both my parents or teachers. we had a lot of fun at home. after the bombing of the church, a lot of things changed. i think we all became a little more quiet. we became a little more fearful. we had heard these bombs going off, but it became very real because we lost four of our friends. i struggled with it tremendously because i was trying to understand as a child of 14, trying to understand what could

make this situation right. if this was all about the color of your skin, what could make it right? what were we supposed to do about that? we understood that we can change the parents to whom we are born, our gender, our color, so what were we supposed to do differently? that is what i kept trying to figure out. became just a very troubling thought or obsession that i carried around. i did not understand. six months after they bombed this church, they bombed a house across the street from where i was growing up. bomb, i becamed convinced, i can tell you i was afraid most of the time, wherever i was, wherever i was traveling, when i went off to school, i was convinced that sooner or later i was going to die from one of the bombs that

was exploding in birmingham. so i found myself for many years after that, probably about 20 depressionering from at a time where we didn't call it depression, but it took a long time to sort through the things that had happened here in birmingham and to understand them and to put them in perspective. what made me decide to write the book was just the resurgence of mean-spiritedness that i began to see. i really felt that america had reached a crossroads many years after the bombing of the church. i really felt that america had looked back and had looked at all the mistakes we had made in our country and that they were committed to moving forward in a positive way for all of its citizens. when i began to realize and to see things that were contradictory to that, i decided that perhaps we had forgotten many of the lessons we have learned.