Black History Month Copyright © 2012 CrossRoadsNews, Inc.
February 18, 2012
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Section B
Church bombing a vivid memory, still By Jennifer Ffrench Parker
Sept. 15, 1963, started off as a beautiful Sunday morning. It was clear and the sun was shining. Thirteen-year-old Barbara Cross and her friends were excited about the first Youth Sunday at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., where her father, the Rev. John H. Cross, had been pastor for just over a year. After Sunday school ended in the church’s basement, Barbara was on the way to the restroom with her friends when her teacher, Ella Demand, stopped her. “She gave me a clerical assignment,” Barbara said. She asked her to write a list of students who were moving up to the next class. Her friends – Denise McNair, 11, and Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robinson and Addie Mae Collins, all 14 years old – went on without her. Minutes later, there was a loud explosion. Forty-eight years after the attack, Cross, now 60 years old and living in Decatur, still tears up at the memory of that morning. “It was a horrible noise,” Cross said. “The building was shaking, and the lights went out.” She screamed and began running in the dark. “Children were running everywhere all panicky,” she said. “My heart was racing real fast.” Adults guided the children out of the darkened basement. Cross said she remembers thinking that maybe Russia or Cuba had bombed the United States. The truth was much more local, and the reason was sinister. It turned out that Ku Klux Klan members had planted 22 sticks of dynamite under the stairwell from the first floor sanctuary to the church basement, right next to the gas meter and the girls restroom. Cross said the KKK was angry about her father allowing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to hold meetings at the church; the integration of Alabama’s schools five days
Decatur resident Barbara Cross shows the display board she uses to teach students about the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., that killed four of her friends. Cross shares a message of forgiveness during Black History Month programs.
Jennifer Ffrench Parker / CrossRoadsNews
earlier; King’s “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963; and desegregation of downtown Birmingham’s lunch counters and department store fitting rooms that April. The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, one of Birmingham’s largest black churches, counted among its members the city’s black professionals. “We had architects, doctors, lawyers, educators and business owners,” Cross said. When her father dug through the rubble, he found the bodies of her friends. They were so mutilated that they had to be identified from the clothes they were wearing. The only survivor among the girls in the restroom was Addie Mae’s 11-year-old sister,
Origins of observance For the past 36 years, February has been celebrated as Black History Month. It’s four weeks a year when the spotlight focuses on African-American culture, heritage and achievements. Some people argue that one month a year is inadequate, but in 1976 – when the Washington, D.C.-based Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History Inc. expanded the former Negro History Week observances to a monthlong celebration – the contributions of African-Americans were largely ignored in this country. Harvard-educated Carter G. Woodson, who founded the association in 1915, initiated Negro History Week in 1926 to focus on the contributions of blacks in the development of America. At the time, the contributions of African-Americans had been largely left out of textbooks and the media. Woodson, who is called “the Father of Black History,” is the author of a number of books, including “The Mis-Education of the Negro,” published in 1933. That book outlines how poorly African-American children were being taught in school. It was Woodson’s hope that with the annual Black History observances, all Americans would be reminded of their ethnic roots and would develop mutual respect for each other. He picked February for the observances because it is the birth month of Frederick Douglass, who fought against slavery, and President Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves. In 2012, the theme of the month is “Black Women in American History and Culture.”
Sarah Collins, who was badly injured and lost her right eye. In addition to the deaths of the four girls, who were the subject of Spike Lee’s 1997 film “Four Little Girls,” 23 other children were injured that day. Cross later found out that she had been hit in the head by a falling light fixture. Her youngest sister Lynne, who was 4 years old, sustained a cut on her forehead, and Alma, 11, suffered a cut on her leg. Her brother Michael, who was 5, was also at church that day and had nightmares for a long time. Between 1947 and 1965, more than 50 bombings occurred in Birmingham, earning the city the nickname “Bombingham.” Among the 1963 bombings were the home
of King’s brother, A.D. William King, and the home and church of the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. The Cross family, who had received bomb threats before, didn’t spend that night at home. “We stayed with neighbors,” Cross remembers. The next day, King, his brother, Ralph David Abernathy and Dick Gregory came calling. “I opened the door, shook his hand and showed him to my parents,” Cross said, adding that it was the first time she had met the famed civil rights leader. Please see BOMBING, page B4
Woodson, the ‘Father of Black History’ Historian Carter G. Woodson was born to His first book, “The Education of the poor former slaves in New Canton, Va., on Negro Prior to 1861,” was published in 1915, the same year he co-founded the AsDec. 19, 1875. sociation for the Study of Negro Life and His parents, James and Eliza Riddle WoodHistory with Jesse E. Moorland. son, were so poor that he couldn’t attend He launched The Journal of Negro school regularly, but through self-instruction History, now The Journal of African he was able to master the fundamentals of comAmerican History, in 1916. His second mon school subjects by the time he was 17. book, “A Century of Negro Migration,” During the 1890s, Woodson hired himself out as a farm and manual laborer. He also was published in 1918. It was followed drove a garbage truck, worked in coal in 1921 by “The History of the Negro mines, and attended high school and Church” and in 1922 by the “The Negro college in Berea College, Ky. in Our History.” He earned a B.L. degree in 1903 and Carter G. Woodson At various times in his life, Woodson worked in the Philippines for the U.S. War Department taught school and was a principal. until early 1907. He also was the dean of Howard University’s School Woodson traveled to Africa, Asia and Europe and of Liberal Arts and West Virginia Collegiate Institute. In 1926, he launched Negro History Week, which briefly attended the Sorbonne in Paris, France. He received an M.A. degree in history, Romance lan- was expanded to Black History Month in 1976. guages and literature from the University of Chicago in Woodson was a sought-after speaker at schools, 1908 and earned his doctorate in history from Harvard Negro History Week events, and HBCU graduation ceremonies. In February 1935, he addressed “more than University in 1912. A prolific writer, Woodson wrote, co-wrote or edited three thousand persons” in Detroit. more than 20 books. Woodson, who never married and had no chilHe also wrote hundreds of essays in leading black dren, died of a heart attack on April 3, 1950. newspapers and created the Negro History Bulletin for He is buried at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in children and schoolteachers. Suitland-Silver Hill, Md. His most famous and enduring book – “The MisHis Washington, D.C., home has been preserved as Education of the Negro” – was published in 1933. the Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site.
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CrossRoadsNews
February 18, 2012
“I often think that without the arts, without music, the movement would have been a bird without wings.”
Trailblazing soap opera star reflects on treatment, ‘blackness’ Pioneering actress Ellen Holly, who was the first black actor to be cast in a central role in daytime television, is offering reflections on her rocky journey on the soap opera “One Life to Live” in an open letter to fans and historians on www.blackstarimploding.com. The soap’s final episode took place last month after more than 40 years on the air. Holly, now 81, detailed her treatment on the soap opera in her 1994 autobiography, “One Life: The Autobiography of an African American Actress.” In her open letter on her new Web site, Holly said that she and Lillian Hayman, the actress who played her mother on “One Life to Live,” did not leave the show in 1985 “to go on to greener fields” as the show said. “Not so,” she writes. “We had been terminated, in secrecy, and with what we personally experienced as gratuitous brutality.” Holly, a fair-skinned African-American actress, was cast in 1968 as Carla Bernari, a black actress facing discrimination who decides to pass as a white. The trailblazing story line focusing on a black woman helped “One Life to Live” become a ratings juggernaut. The use of black actors and actresses also brought in a large and loyal black audience – one-quarter of the soap opera’s total viewership – for “One Life to Live” and the other ABC daytime soaps like “All My Children” and “General Hospital.” But Holly claims that while the show was being hailed in the press as ground breaking for both casting her in a central role and for drawing from the headlines of the turbulent 1960s, the treatment she and some of her fellow black cast mates received from show executives took a page from the playbook of daytime television’s duplicitous story lines. She said she was paid pennies to the dollar paid white stars and suffered years of overt hostility from producers. Holly’s “One Life to Live” saga began after she wrote a September 1968 piece for The New York Times called, “How Black Do You Have to Be?” that decried the rejection of fairskinned black performers as “not black enough to use” for roles on camera (commercials, soaps, and prime-time TV and films).
The Ellen Holly files: Ellen Holly was born in New York City on Jan. 16, 1931. After graduating from Hunter College where she majored in fine arts and minored in speech and drama, she made her Broadway debut opposite actor Barry Sullivan. n She played Carla Bernari, a black actress facing discrimination who decides to pass as a white, on the ABC daytime soap “One Life to Live” from 1968 to 1985. n She was the first black actress selected for entry into the Actors Studio, leading to major Broadway roles and several years at the New York Shakespeare Festival. n Her stage roles include “Tiger Tiger Burning Bright,” “Face of a Hero,” “Henry V,” “MacBeth” and “Taming of the Shrew.” n Holly’s film credits include “Take a Giant Step,” “Cops & Robbers,” “School Daze” and “10,000 Black Men Named George.” n She also guest starred in “The Defender,” “Dr. Kildare,” “The Nurses,” “Spenser for Hire” and “In the Heat of the Night.”
Ellen Holly, who played a black actress passing for white on “One Life to Live,” says she was terminated in secrecy.
Agnes Nixon, who was developing “One Life to Live” for ABC, saw the piece and cast her as Carla Bernari. Holly was originally contracted for one year but became such a huge favorite that her role lasted for 17 years. She was 54 when her role ended. She was also a regular on the daytime drama “The Guiding Light.”
“When people find out how badly I was treated, they ask why I stayed,” Holly said. “Not only was it due to the lack of options I had because of the dearth of roles offered to light-skinned African- Americans actors, but also because I was aware that my casting was a sort of experiment, one that as other black ‘firsts’ needed to succeed for others to be hired.” She continues to speak out on the obstacles faced by fair-skinned black actors and on the issue of what defines “blackness.” After her dismissal, Holly took occasional theater roles and worked until retirement as a library clerk. She shares details of her run on the show on www.blackstarimploding .com and encourages soap opera fans to contact her there.
Tuskegee Airmen in person, in film Activist remembered for kindness Members of the Tuskegee Airmen will be at Hillcrest Church of Christ in person and on film on Feb. 24. During the 7:30-to-8:30 p.m. program, participants will talk to some of the remaining Tuskegee Airmen and watch their exploits
in documentary clips. The program, which is free to attend, is sponsored by the Hillcrest Youth Ministry. The church is at 1939 Snapfinger Road in Decatur. For more information, call 404289-4573.
Satin Finish Band at airport atrium The Satin Finish Band will round out Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport’s Black History Month weekly music series on Feb. 24. The band will perform from 5 to 7 p.m. in the airport atrium. The program, held Fridays this month, spotlights artists from various genres, including soul, jazz, blues, and rhythm and blues. Performers included Frankie’s Blues Mission, Charles Marshall “the Jazz Ambassador,” and the Sounds of Essence. Katherine Dirga, the airport’s Art Pro-
gram manager, said the series pays tribute to African-American musicians. “As our nation celebrates the accomplishments of African-Americans, HartsfieldJackson is proud to remember the musical artists who reshaped American history through their wonderful talents,” Dirga said in a Feb. 3 statement. “We hope passengers and employees traveling through the atrium area will take a moment to enjoy these mini-concerts.” For more information, visit www .atlanta-airport.com.
Novel sheds light on turbulent era Javon Brothers, author of “A Deadly Night in the Harbor of Hospitality,” will sign copies of his historical novel on Feb. 23 at the Blue Elephant Bookshop in Decatur. The signing begins at 7 p.m. The novel, published in August, tells the true story of a 29-year-old black man, William Poole, who killed a white Navy seaman on New Year’s night 1943 in Elizabeth City, N.C. On that evening, two rac- Javon Brothers ist Southern sailors who accused Poole of an unsolved rape initiated an afternoon of bullying and beating. Poole retaliated, and that night the Ku Klux Klan and vigilante parties attempted to burn, lynch and massacre blacks in their small enclave.
Military troops were called in to prevent mass arson and devastation. The governor, J. Melville Broughton, dispatched a contingent of North Carolina state troopers to the area the next day and placed the N.C. State Guard on alert. Poole found himself wrapped up in a trial that sculpted the rest of his life. With questionable evidence and exhausted lawyers, Elizabeth City becomes the center of one of the most controversial trials in history. Brothers, who was born and raised in a semi-rural enclave on the outskirts of Elizabeth City shortly after the incident, said the story could have played out in any town in the South. He grew up hearing bits and pieces of the story. The Blue Elephant Bookshop is at 407 W. Ponce de Leon Ave. For more information, call 404-373-1565.
The late civil rights activist with,” friend Kalamu ya Salaam Ed Brown, who was an organizer said. for the pivotal Student NonvioMACE educated rural voters, lent Coordinating Committee, developed catfish farms and grocery was hailed at a Jan. 15 Atlanta stores, and promoted the Missismemorial service as man who sippi Delta Blues Festival. fought fire with a feather while Despite the many enterprises wearing asbestos gloves. MACE started, and the many black Brown, who was one of Ed Brown government officials elected from the less famous veterans of the the area, the Delta remains the movement, fought alongside John Lewis poorest region in the country. and others in the 1960s. Brown used the knowledge he gained He died on Nov. 23, 2011, after bat- in the Delta in the fight against apartheid tling cancer. in South Africa, where he represented the During the memorial service at the Carter Center, educating rural voters and Woodruff Arts Center, Lewis, now a observing elections. congressman representing Atlanta’s 5th His experiences fed his fascination with District, said Brown had a beautiful heart African art. He became an expert as both coland loved people. lector and a promoter as a co-owner of the “Sometimes people come along who Harris Brown Art Gallery in Boston. love humanity, who love the world,” said As a board member of Atlanta’s High Lewis. He said he thought Brown’s smile Museum of Art, Brown helped establish the would have melted the hostility, the hate. David C. Driskell Prize for African-American Speakers remembered Brown’s benign art and art history. The prize was named after spirit and his sense of humor during a life the Howard University art professor who first dedicated to human advancement. sparked Brown’s interest. In 1960, Brown was expelled from Lewis said Brown loved what is beautiful. Louisiana State University. Authorities “I often think that without the arts, without accused him of disturbing the peace by music, the movement would have been a bird taking part in one of the first sit-ins to without wings,” Lewis said. protest segregation. He was forbidden to Brown’s brother Jamil al-Amin, formerly enroll in any college in Louisiana. H. Rap Brown, first worked with him in So Brown and his six fellow student SNCC, just before leaving for the Black Panprotesters sued and were exonerated as thers. Brown remained close to his brother, part of the Briscoe v. Louisiana case. who was convicted in 2002 of killing a FulHe later chose to attend Howard Uni- ton County sheriff two years before, despite versity in Washington, where he met future contradictory evidence. Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin. Before his death, Brown traveled to the “Ed taught me that the position [a per- maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo., son held] only mattered if you committed where his brother is serving a life sentence yourself to improving the lives of others,” without parole. In a letter read at the meFranklin said. morial, al-Amin wrote that his brother “was After college, Brown moved to the Mis- fierce in kindness.” sissippi Delta, where he displayed his sense Their youngest brother, Lance Brown, of irony by naming an organization he pledged to continue Ed Brown’s struggle. directed the Mississippi Action for Com“We will take that baton he passed us and munity Empowerment, or MACE. we will love others. That is what Ed would “Mace! That’s what they sprayed us want, so that is what we will do.”
February 18, 2012
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The film blows the lid off one of America’s most cherished myths – that slavery ended with the passage of the 13th Amendment.
Documentary explores forced labor in South Celebrations in Lithonia Blackmon found “Slaver y by span generations, genres that, under laws enAnother Name,” a acted specifically to documentary that intimidate blacks, explores how forcedtens of thousands of labor laws in the African-Americans South served to perwere arbitrarily arpetuate slavery long rested, hit with outafter the Civil War rageous fines, and had ended, will be charged for the costs aired Feb. 26 and 27 of their own arrests. on WPBA Channel Armies of “free” black men labored without compensation in the years With no means to 30 in Atlanta. following the Civil War. The brutal system persisted until World War II. pay these ostensible Based on the Pu“debts,” prisoners were sold as forced laborlitzer Prize-winning book of the same name, ers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, the film blows the lid off one of America’s most railroads, quarries, and farm plantations. Local cherished myths – that slavery in this country governments became key providers of inmate ended with passage of the 13th Amendment. labor, while pleas for federal intervention fell It recounts how in the years following the on deaf ears. Civil War, insidious new forms of forced labor Armies of “free” black men labored without emerged in the American South, keeping huncompensation, were repeatedly bought and dreds of thousands of African-Americans in sold, and were forced through beatings and bondage, trapping them in a brutal system that would persist until the onset of World War II. Douglas Blackmon physical torture to do the bidding of white Author Douglas A. Blackmon, a former reporter for masters for decades after the official abolition of AmeriThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution and currently Atlanta can slavery. The film will air on WPBA 30 at 9 p.m. on Feb. 26 bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal, sifted through original documents and personal narratives to produce and at 3 a.m. on Feb. 27. Check your cable or satellite the book, which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non- provider for channels. For more information, visit www .slaverybyanothername.com. fiction in 2009.
Gullah Sea Islands focus of Heritage Club Fifth- through eighth-graders can learn about their culture with hands-on and interactive activities at the SankofaSpirit Heritage Club on Feb. 25. The 11 a.m.-to-1 p.m. program will focus on the Gullah Sea Islands and will include music, language, art projects and games. Pre-registration is required. Early registration is $10 until Feb. 18 and $15 until Feb. 23. To register online, visit www.sankofaspirit.com. For large groups, e-mail info@
sankofaspirit.com. The session will be held at the Georgia Hill Neighborhood Center, 250 Georgia Ave. St. S.E., Room No. 209, in Atlanta. The nonprofit SankofaSpirit is dedicated to providing cultural and educational programs and services that focus on Africa and the African diaspora. For more information, visit www.sankofaspirit.com or call 770-234-5890.
Lithonia’s youth and adults are celebrating Black History Month with performances, skits, a fashion show and a cookout between Feb. 20 and 29. The commemoration continues with a Feb. 20 youth talent showcase at the Lithonia First United Methodist Church. Young people from the Terraces at Parkview and other community members will dance, sing and play music from 3 to 6 p.m. The church is at 3099 Stone Mountain St. On Feb. 25, the Friends of the Lithonia African American Cemetery Organization will host a Community Cookout at the old Bruce Street School, across from the East DeKalb Precinct. From 2 to 4 p.m., participants can find out about the cemetery and how to volunteer to preserve the community’s history. For more information, call Corey Turner at 770-895-4305. Bruce Street East DeKalb Senior Center is hosting a Black History Program on Feb. 28 with a skit and fashion show from 10:30 a.m. to noon. The center is at 2484 Bruce St. The Lithonia Middle School students are staging a Black History Month play on Feb. 29. The school is at 2451 Randall Ave. For time and other details, call 678-875-0702.
Heritage Day Service Dr. Walter Kimbrough will be the featured speaker at the Columbia Drive United Methodist Church Black History Month Heritage Day Service and Feast on Feb. 19. Kimbrough is pastor emeritus of Atlanta’s Cascade United Methodist Church and author of “Nothing Is Impossible.” The theme for the 10 a.m. service is “Remembrance, Recollection and Reflection.” Kimbrough will speak about “Reclaiming Our Mission to the City.” The Heritage Day Service also includes a Naming Ceremony in which participants will Walter Kimbrough create their own Naming Rock in a hands-on display area. Columbia Drive United Methodist Church is at 2067 Columbia Drive in Decatur. For more information, call 404-284-4151.
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February 18, 2012
“I am not going to apologize for my tears when kids are killed in a terrorist attack because of racism.”
Civil Rights Tour to revisit sites and landmarks in Alabama Black History buffs and students can visit landmarks and meet the people of the movement on the Evelyn Gibson Lowery Civil Rights Heritage Educational Tour to Alabama on March 3-4. The weekend tour journeys from Atlanta to black historical sites and landmarks in the cities of Birmingham, Marion, Selma, Whitehall, Montgomery and Tuskegee. Lowery is the wife of noted civil rights activist the Rev. Joseph Lowery. She and the SCLC/W.O.M.E.N. Inc. have constructed 13 memorials in remembrance of those who sacrificed or gave their lives to the struggle. Since 1987, she has personally hosted the tour that retraces the steps of the civil rights movement in Alabama. The tour takes off from the nonprofit’s Atlanta headquarters at 328 Auburn Ave. Monuments in Alabama include those honoring Coretta Scott King; the Rev. James Reeb; Albert Turner Sr.; Rosa Louise Parks; Viola Liuzzo; Freedom Wall Perry County; U.S. Rep. John Lewis, Marie Foster & Amelia Boynton, and Hosea Williams; Earl T. Shinhoster; Freedom Wall – Selma; the Rev. James Orange; and Jimmie Lee Jackson. This year, they also will visit the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, which was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan on Sept. 15, 1963. Four black girls – Denise McNair, 11, and Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robinson and Addie Mae Collins, all 14 years old – who were attending Sunday School in the church’s basement, were killed in the restroom, which was near where 22 sticks of dynamites were set. Tour participants can relive events that brought about dramatic change in the United States and hear the stories of the guides, including Decatur resident Barbara Cross, who was there in the 1960s. Cross was the 13-year-
The Edmund Pettus Bridge was the scene of “Bloody Sunday” on March 7, 1965.
volunteer and donation information, call 404-584-0303.
Birmingham was nicknamed “Bombingham,” because between 1947 and 1965, more than 50 bombings occurred there, including the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church attack , above.
old daughter of the Rev. John H. Cross, pastor of the church when it was bombed. The four slain girls were her friends. On March 4, the tour will join the Rev. Al Sharpton and other civil rights activists for the 47th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” the March 7, 1965, crossing of the Edmund Pettus Bridge during which police brutally beat civil rights marchers on a 54-mile trek from Selma to Montgomery to protest discrimination and to call for voter rights.
The cost of the trip, which includes the bus ride and one-night hotel stay, is $275 for adults and $225 for students. Students under age 16 must be accompanied by a parent or adult guardian. For youth groups, one adult is required for every five students. Sponsorships, from $225 to $5,000, also are available. For more information, visit www.sclcwomeninc.org or e-mail sclcwomeninc@aol.com. For membership,
Day trip to Selma Families also can take a day bus trip to Selma on March 4. The 2012 “It’s a Family Affair” Pilgrimage to Selma, Ala., commemorates the 47th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. It leaves the Mall at West End in southwest Atlanta at 6 a.m. on March 4 and returns at 9 p.m. The trip is sponsored by the Voter Empowerment Collaborative, a program of the Atlanta-based nonprofit Love in Action Ministries. Riders will worship at Shiloh Baptist Church at 11 a.m. and march to the Edmund Pettus Bridge from Brow Chapel AME Church at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $35 per person. An optional lunch at Shiloh Baptist Church is $7. For more information, call the Rev. Albert Love at 404-788-4542 or the Rev. Ward at 770-572-3782.
Survivor keeps memories of friends alive, carries on father’s legacy BOMBING,
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King delivered the eulogy at the joint funeral for three of the girls. Cross said the theme of Sunday school that morning was “A Love That Forgives.” It would be 14 years before any of the four KKK members – Robert “Dynamite Bob” Chambliss, Herman Frank Cash, Thomas Blanton Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry – who were rounded up and questioned in the days after the bombing, would be brought to trial. “Back then, they didn’t prosecute white people for killing black people,” Cross said. In 1977, Chambliss was convicted of murder. He died in prison in 1985. Cash died in 1994 without being charged. Blanton was found guilty of murder in 2001; and 39 years later, on May 23, 2002, Cherry, then 73, was convicted of murder after his granddaughter testified he had bragged about the crime. Cross said the noise of the bomb going off made her a nervous wreck for years, “I would shake a lot,” she said. “I didn’t talk about it for 20 years.” Last year, when she returned to the church on a Civil Rights-Heritage Tour, visiting the church was as emotional as ever for her. Cross said it felt like the breath was being sucked out of her. “It felt like I was having a heart attack,” she said. In 2002, Cross testified at Cherry’s trial. The FBI gave her a pin for sharing the story of her friends. Cross began talking to groups in the late 1990s after Pastor George McCalep, the late pastor at Greenforest Baptist Church, acknowledged her as a survivor during a Black History Month sermon. After that, people began asking her to speak to schoolchildren, colleges, and community and church groups. Each year during February, which is observed as Black History Month, her schedule fills up. This year she is talking to more than eight groups, including students at Georgia Perimeter College, Smoke Rise Elementary and Towers High schools in DeKalb County, and Peach Chapel school in Conyers. Cross, who retired in 2004 from BellSouth after 31 years, is now a DeKalb Schools substitute teacher. She is an Advisory Board member of the SCLC/Women’s
Pledge to peace When she speaks to groups, Barbara Cross asks students and adults to pledge to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and nonviolent work by helping to make this world a better, more just place for all people: I will: n Respect all people. n Live a life of loving, not hating. n Choose patience over anger, nonviolence over force. n Actively help to promote freedom, justice and world peace.
Barbara Cross, second from right, with her family in 1963 when she was 13. The picture was taken before the bombing.
Organizational Movement for Equality Now and also serves as a tour guide with SCLC/W.O.M.E.N.’s annual Civil RightsHeritage Tour to Alabama. The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church at 1530 Sixth Ave. and 16th Street is on the tour. A kitchen now stands where the restroom in which her friends died once was. Her father remained pastor of the church until 1968 when the family relocated to Atlanta. He was associate pastor of Oakhurst Baptist Church from 1971-79, where he helped co-pastor the church that dealt with demographic changes as more African-Americans moved into DeKalb County. From there, he was assigned to Greenforest Missionary Baptist Church in 1979, where he helped recruit McCalep to become the church’s pastor. He remained a Greenforest member until his death at age 82 on Nov. 15, 2007. Cross’ presentation to students includes two display boards with a copy of the Sept. 15, 1963, church program and photographs of her father and mother, the rubble where her friends’ bodies were found, and a stained-glass window
donated to the church by the people of Wales, England, in memory of the slain girls. She also has newspaper clippings of the trials and convictions of the men who planted the dynamite. Even today, Cross chokes up at the memories of that fateful Sunday that has colored the rest of her life. “I am not going to apologize for my tears when kids are killed in a terrorist attack because of racism,” she said. Her sisters also live in DeKalb County. Cross shares her late parents’ Decatur home with Lynne. Alma, whose last name is now Barber, lives in Stone Mountain. While Cross collects books and newspaper clippings of the attack and talks often about that fateful day, Lynne won’t speak of it. Pressed, Barber, who was only 11 years old at the time of the attack, said she knew of the water hoses and dogs that were released on civil right protesters in Birmingham and Alabama’s segregationist Gov. George Wallace. She said she never dreamed anyone would bomb their church. A week before the bombing, Wallace had told The New York Times that to stop integration, Alabama needed a “few first-class funerals.” “When it happened, the [Sunday school] teacher knew immediately,” Barber remembered last week. “She said, ‘Oh my God, they bombed the church.’” Cross believes she was spared that Sunday so that she can keep the memories of her friends alive and carry on her father’s legacy. “My purpose is to talk about that message of forgiveness,” she said. “I know what it is to lose friends. I think I was spared to teach children and adults too about being kind and forgiving. There is no place for hate.”