Miami Herald Logo

Dead girls and the lives they might have lived | Miami Herald

×
  • E-edition
  • Home
    • Site Information
    • Contact Us
    • About Us
    • Herald Store
    • RSS Feeds
    • Special Sections
    • Advertise
    • Advertise with Us
    • Media Kit
    • Mobile
    • Mobile Apps & eReaders
    • Newsletters
    • Social
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Google+
    • Instagram
    • YouTube

    • Sections
    • News
    • South Florida
    • Miami-Dade
    • Broward
    • Florida Keys
    • Florida
    • Politics
    • Weird News
    • Weather
    • National & World
    • Colombia
    • National
    • World
    • Americas
    • Cuba
    • Guantánamo
    • Haiti
    • Venezuela
    • Local Issues
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Health Care
    • In Depth
    • Issues & Ideas
    • Traffic
    • Sections
    • Sports
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Pro & College
    • Miami Dolphins
    • Miami Heat
    • Miami Marlins
    • Florida Panthers
    • College Sports
    • University of Miami
    • Florida International
    • University of Florida
    • Florida State University
    • More Sports
    • High School Sports
    • Auto Racing
    • Fighting
    • Golf
    • Horse Racing
    • Outdoors
    • Soccer
    • Tennis
    • Youth Sports
    • Other Sports
    • Politics
    • Elections
    • The Florida Influencer Series
    • Sections
    • Business
    • Business Monday
    • Banking
    • International Business
    • National Business
    • Personal Finance
    • Real Estate News
    • Small Business
    • Technology
    • Tourism & Cruises
    • Workplace
    • Business Plan Challenge
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Cindy Krischer Goodman
    • The Starting Gate
    • Work/Life Balancing Act
    • Movers
    • Sections
    • Living
    • Advice
    • Fashion
    • Food & Drink
    • Health & Fitness
    • Home & Garden
    • Pets
    • Recipes
    • Travel
    • Wine
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Dave Barry
    • Ana Veciana-Suarez
    • Flashback Miami
    • More Living
    • LGBTQ South Florida
    • Palette Magazine
    • Indulge Magazine
    • South Florida Album
    • Broward Album
    • Sections
    • Entertainment
    • Books
    • Comics
    • Games & Puzzles
    • Horoscopes
    • Movies
    • Music & Nightlife
    • People
    • Performing Arts
    • Restaurants
    • TV
    • Visual Arts
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Jose Lambiet
    • Lesley Abravanel
    • More Entertainment
    • Events Calendar
    • Miami.com
    • Contests & Promotions
    • Sections
    • All Opinion
    • Editorials
    • Op-Ed
    • Editorial Cartoons
    • Jim Morin
    • Letters to the Editor
    • From Our Inbox
    • Speak Up
    • Submit a Letter
    • Meet the Editorial Board
    • Influencers Opinion
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Blog Directory
    • Columnist Directory
    • Andres Oppenheimer
    • Carl Hiaasen
    • Leonard Pitts Jr.
    • Fabiola Santiago
    • Obituaries
    • Obituaries in the News
    • Place an Obituary

    • Place an ad
    • All Classifieds
    • Announcements
    • Apartments
    • Auctions/Sales
    • Automotive
    • Commercial Real Estate
    • Employment
    • Garage Sales
    • Legals
    • Merchandise
    • Obituaries
    • Pets
    • Public Notices
    • Real Estate
    • Services
  • Public Notices
  • Cars
  • Jobs
  • Moonlighting
  • Real Estate
  • Mobile & Apps

  • el Nuevo Herald
  • Miami.com
  • Indulge

Op-Ed

Dead girls and the lives they might have lived

Leonard Pitts Jr.

    ORDER REPRINT →

September 14, 2013 07:00 PM

This is for four women who are not here.

It is for grandchildren who never existed and retirement celebrations that were never held. It is for Sunday dinners that were never prepared in homes that were never purchased. It is for children who were never born and fathers who never got to walk daughters down the aisle. It is for mortarboards that were never flung into the air, for first kisses that were never stolen, for dreams that ended even as they still were being conceived.

This is for four little girls who died, 50 years ago today.

Died. It is, in this context, a misleading word. Makes it sound as if maybe 11-year-old Denise McNair and Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson, all 14, succumbed to some disease. Hearing it, you might not realize they died because terrorists planted a bomb beneath an exterior stairway of their church and that it exploded while they were in the basement preparing for Sunday School. You might not realize that a chunk of concrete embedded itself in one child’s skull or that another child’s head was torn from her body.

Sign Up and Save

Get six months of free digital access to the Miami Herald

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

#ReadLocal

Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., had been the nerve center of a human rights campaign that made the city notorious the previous spring, the place from which nonviolent armies poured to face snarling dogs and high pressure hoses under the command of police commissioner Bull Connor. Because this was what you had to do if you were African American and wanted to drink from a clean public fountain, try on clothes in a department store or buy a hamburger at a lunch counter in Birmingham.

The marchers won that battle and their movement was at a summit of hope by the time it convened in Washington to march in support of federal legislation. “I have a dream today!” the great man roared and it must have felt, on that transcendent day, as if that dream shimmered at the very verge of reality.

Eighteen days later, the bomb exploded at 16th Street Baptist, where the Sunday School lesson was to have been “The Love That Forgives.” And the summit of inspiration gave way to a yawning abyss of despair.

At a funeral for three of the little girls — Carole’s family buried her separately — the great man sought to find the message in their deaths. This tragedy, he said, should challenge preachers who meet hatred with silence, politicians who use it to buy votes, a federal government that compromises with conservative hypocrisy and African Americans who passively accept status quo.

He preached against despair and loss of faith. But he also let slip something that suggested how deeply even he, Martin Luther King, a mighty preacher of the Christian gospel, was shaken by this event. “Life is hard,” he said, “at times as hard as crucible steel.”

Indeed. Just when you think you know the depths to which people can sink, the extremes to which they can go in their sheer, pathological hatred, something happens that takes your breath away.

That’s what that day did. The martyrdom of four little girls made a nation question its conscience — What kind of people kill children in church? — and so, helped turn the tide toward freedom. Congress said as much last week in awarding them its Gold Medal.

But to consider America 50 years later, still swathed in its tribalism, proud in its manifold hatreds, righteous in its denials, is to be reminded that tides are not permanent. They ebb and flow. And the battle to make America live up to the first sentence of its founding document — the one about the “self-evident” truth of equality — is ever ongoing.

“Change” King once said, “does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.” Such struggle is the price of freedom.

And a debt we owe four women who are not here.

  Comments  

Videos

Hillary Clinton takes on Trump administration, rebukes Spicer during California speech

Miami poet Richard Blanco's tribute to Orlando: 'One Pulse — One Poem'

View More Video

Trending Stories

Why were former members of the U.S. military driving around Haiti heavily armed?

February 19, 2019 07:49 PM

Cuts are coming for Dolphins’ receivers, but there’s one their new coach raves about

February 19, 2019 12:31 PM

Here’s one pricey player that the Miami Dolphins’ new offensive line coach wants back

February 19, 2019 04:54 PM

Haiti’s economic lifeline has taken a hit. Expedia just made it worse.

February 19, 2019 06:04 PM

Rating Reggie McKenzie’s Oakland drafts a preview of what he can bring to Miami Dolphins

February 19, 2019 12:59 AM

Read Next

Knight Foundation’s investment in media seeks to preserve an essential element of democracy: an informed citizenry

Op-Ed

Knight Foundation’s investment in media seeks to preserve an essential element of democracy: an informed citizenry

By Alberto Ibargüen

    ORDER REPRINT →

February 19, 2019 01:24 PM

Knight Foundation has spent a decade exploring different approaches to helping local news adapt to a changed media environment. We have a sense of what works.

KEEP READING

Sign Up and Save

#ReadLocal

Get six months of free digital access to the Miami Herald

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

MORE OP-ED

Trump wants to end HIV transmission by 2030. That means, he should withdraw proposal that undercuts treatment.

Op-Ed

Trump wants to end HIV transmission by 2030. That means, he should withdraw proposal that undercuts treatment.

February 19, 2019 04:19 PM
Citizens’ Climate Lobby offers tool to endorse Carbon Dividend Act

Op-Ed

Citizens’ Climate Lobby offers tool to endorse Carbon Dividend Act

February 18, 2019 07:41 PM
Supreme Court shouldn’t let Trump administration undermine Census

Op-Ed

Supreme Court shouldn’t let Trump administration undermine Census

February 18, 2019 07:08 PM
Hillary Clinton is running for president again, sort of

Op-Ed

Hillary Clinton is running for president again, sort of

February 18, 2019 06:41 PM
Alex Acosta acted with professionalism and integrity in handling the Jeffrey Epstein case

Op-Ed

Alex Acosta acted with professionalism and integrity in handling the Jeffrey Epstein case

February 15, 2019 12:02 PM
Conservative fiscal policies have made Florida a haven for high-tax refugees

Op-Ed

Conservative fiscal policies have made Florida a haven for high-tax refugees

February 15, 2019 06:38 PM
Take Us With You

Real-time updates and all local stories you want right in the palm of your hand.

Icon for mobile apps

Miami Herald App

View Newsletters

Subscriptions
  • Start a Subscription
  • Customer Service
  • eEdition
  • Vacation Hold
  • Pay Your Bill
  • Rewards
Learn More
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletters
  • News in Education
  • Public Insight Network
  • Reader Panel
Advertising
  • Place a Classified
  • Media Kit
  • Commercial Printing
  • Public Notices
Copyright
Commenting Policy
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service


Back to Story