BACK TO BOMBINGHAM

Sept. 15, 1963, was Youth Day at Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Four African-American girls in white dresses and shoes had left Bible class early and were about to go upstairs to help run the adult service. But before they got there, a timed-explosive device planted under the church steps ripped massive holes in the side of the building, sending stone, glass and metal flying in every direction. Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins and Carol Robertson--ages 11 to 14--died in the blast. Even during the bloodiest days of racial conflict in the South, even in a city so beset...