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SARAH NAGENGAST ’23
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, GETTY IMAGES
CAMPUS NEWS
From left: Lisa McNair, sister of Denise McNair who was one of the four girls killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, addresses the Messiah chapel audience Jan. 18. The country of Wales donated a stained glass window, later known as the Wales Window of Alabama, to the church after the bombing. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave the eulogy for the four girls: Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Morris Wesley, Carole Robertson and Densie McNair.
SPEAKER’S LIFE ALTERED BY 1963 BOMBING MESSIAH HOSTS LISA MCNAIR, SISTER OF 1 OF 4 GIRLS KILLED IN BIRMINGHAM CHURCH Meet Lisa McNair, the younger sister of Denise McNair—one of the four girls killed in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. She was born almost a year to the day after the bombing. As part of the 2022 Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration Events Series at Messiah, McNair served as the guest speaker at Common Chapel and Evening Chapel Jan. 18. As she showed the slides of her PowerPoint presentation, she paused as she showed a photo of the devastation of that infamous day. “In this picture, you see history,” she said, “but I see family members.”
She says her late parents, devastated by the loss, chose to love instead of hate. Her father was an elder in the Lutheran church across town, another church that proved pivotal in the McNairs’ lives. “He went to his own church. He was a Lutheran. The membership of that church was … about 200-300 people, and everybody was African-American except for 5 people: the pastor [Joseph Ellwanger], his wife and three kids,” she said. “They gave us the opportunity to learn that all whites didn’t hate us. All white people didn’t want to kill us, and some of them wanted to be our friend. Daddy was an elder in his church, and the Ellwangers were at our house all the time, and we were at their house all the time. So it was a wonderful gift from God to have that.” JUSTICE DELAYED Although one of the bombers was brought to justice in 1977, there were 4-5 men who had been implicated. In 1997, director Spike
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Lee made the documentary “Four Little Girls,” which brought new attention to the tragedy. “This documentary started a dialogue of people saying, ‘Well, what about the other people? What happened to them? Why in 1997 have they not been arrested?’ So the FBI reopened the case, and in 2001 and 2002 the last two people living were convicted of having murdered the four girls. That’s 2001 and 2002, and they were killed in 1963. Think about that,” said McNair. As she closed her address, McNair asked the audience to remember the four girls’ names:
Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Morris Wesley, Carole Robertson and Denise McNair. “They were people that really existed, that made the ultimate sacrifice, whose family lost a child that they’d never get back,” said McNair. “Many of our civil rights stories are not mentioned in our history books. They’re footnotes. They might be a sentence or two or a short paragraph, but these were people who suffered and stories we need to know. They’re our shared American history.” — Anna Seip
“THEY MIGHT BE A SENTENCE OR TWO OR A SHORT PARAGRAPH, BUT THESE WERE PEOPLE WHO SUFFERED AND STORIES WE NEED TO KNOW. THEY’RE OUR SHARED AMERICAN HISTORY.” — Lisa McNair
