While the World Watched

by Carolyn McKinstry

  “Why do you and Grandfather always eat so much cabbage and okra?” I asked her once.

  Mama Lessie smiled. “It’s because we both wear dentures, Carolyn, and we raise and cook the things we can eat.”

  Oftentimes, Granddaddy came home from work, put us grandchildren in the backseat of his car, and took us to pick wild strawberries and blackberries along the roadside. We’d take the berries back to Mama Lessie and eat them as fast as she could wash them.

  Sometimes my grandfather took us into downtown Clanton. He had befriended just about everybody in that city, both black and white. He was the person folks called for advice, prayer, and practical help when someone got into trouble or ended up in jail. He was the one people went to when a baby was born or when someone in the community died or when a couple wanted to get married or when someone needed food or money. At that time in the South, black preachers represented God’s own voice and guidance. My grandfather was respected for two reasons: he was a preacher, and he had a college degree.

  “Come meet my grandbabies!” he would call out with pride to Clanton’s barber or grocer or dry cleaner. Then he would call out our names, one by one, and introduce us to his many friends.

  I especially liked those summers in Clanton when it was just Mama Lessie and me. She would walk me across the street to Miss Daisy’s beauty shop and sit me in the small room built onto the side of Miss Daisy’s house. Then she would stay beside me while Miss Daisy washed and pressed my hair and put real curls in it. Like my father, my grandparents never let me walk anywhere alone. Not even across the street to Miss Daisy’s.

  “Things can happen to little black girls,” my grandfather once told me. I later learned that those “things” meant rape. This was one of the reasons he and my grandmother wouldn’t even let me walk across the street alone from their house to get my hair done. Mama Lessie told me there had been incidents of young black girls walking to the store or to a relative’s house who were picked up by a carful of white men, raped, and then abandoned. It was commonplace in the South—the greatest fear all black parents had for their girls. Most of these rapes were reported but went unpunished. My granddaddy wanted to protect me, to keep me safe.

  “You’re our special granddaughter,” Mama Lessie often told me while Miss Daisy curled my hair. My grandmother made me feel so loved. At my home in Birmingham, I just felt like one of six kids. But at Mama Lessie’s, I was special—an individual, precious, girl-grand-child. She had, after all, raised five very special daughters of her own.

  * * *

  In the basement of Princeton Hospital during those long two weeks, I stayed by Mama Lessie’s side. Various doctors came down infrequently, pulling a small white partition around the bed to offer my grandmother some limited privacy. They checked her heart and took her blood pressure but didn’t do much to treat her actual illness. And no doctor ever spoke to the frightened little black girl who trembled in the chair beside the dying woman. I felt invisible.

  Hired hospital help brought in food trays on a pretty regular schedule, but Mama Lessie never ate a bite. I kept looking into her face as I sat beside her, hoping she would talk to me. But she never said a single word during those weeks at Princeton Hospital. Not one word.

  With each passing day, my fears grew, until they were as tall as the old apple tree my grandfather had planted long ago behind the garage at his Clanton home—the tree his children and grandchildren climbed to pick green apples. I was confused. No one told me why Mama Lessie had gotten sick or if she would ever recover and come home. During those dark days my name should have been “the timid one” or “the scared one,” not Carolyn, “the strong one.”

  Mama Lessie became weaker and frailer with each passing day. At times I closed my eyes and fought hard to remember my two favorite photos of her—her wedding picture and her graduation picture.

  * * *

  My grandfather had married Lessie Lane sometime around her sixteenth birthday. In the lone, faded, wedding photograph, she is looking directly into the camera, her eyes serious and somber, her small body robed in a full-sleeved, polka-dot wedding dress. Her soft, dark hair is smoothed stylishly around her youthful face, with a slight puff of hair combed just so to rise from the top of her head. A large round medallion hangs from her neck. In her hands she holds an assortment of wildflowers—nothing fancy. Perhaps she stopped the buggy and picked them from a roadside field on the way to her wedding.

  * * *

  * * *

  From Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” Speech

  I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

  I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

  I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

  I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

  I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

  I have a dream today.

  I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

  I have a dream today.

  I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

  This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

  This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

  And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

  Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

  Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!

  But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

  Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

  Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

  When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”[6]

  * * *

  * * *

  During those early years of marriage, she birthed five daughters for her hardworking husband. After the girls were born and Mama Lessie passed age thirty, she was able to fulfill her long-held dream: to go
back to school. Granddaddy had graduated from the high school of Selma University in 1920. From there he attended Alabama State Teachers College in Montgomery and earned his bachelor of science degree. Selma University later honored him with a doctor of divinity degree. He wanted his wife to have the same educational privileges he had had.

  Several years later someone snapped Mama Lessie’s photograph in her black graduation cap and gown. In that photo she wears a slight smile and a combined expression of hope and accomplishment. I am certain she was thinking of the future for her daughters and unborn granddaughters on that day of tremendous accomplishment. Sure enough, all five of her daughters graduated from college. Three became teachers, one became a nurse, and one became a dietitian.

  * * *

  Now, laid up in the basement of Princeton Hospital, Mama Lessie’s expression held neither hope nor accomplishment. Each evening as I waited for Mama to bring my grandmother’s home-cooked supper and to relieve me, I sat quietly and watched Mama Lessie slowly die.

  Mama Lessie passed away one night in late August 1957, on Mama’s watch. In later years we learned that her symptoms (severe vaginal bleeding and stabbing gut pain) probably indicated female cancer.

  On Saturday morning August 31, 1957, in the cemetery at Union Baptist Church, we laid Mama Lessie—Mrs. Lessie V. Burt—to rest.

  * * *

  The worship service was about to begin at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on Sunday morning, September 15, 1963. The clock was ticking. I knew I had only a few minutes left to collect the rest of the reports and write the Sunday school summary. I was looking forward to Reverend Cross’s sermon that morning. He had posted the title on the board outside the church: “A Love That Forgives.” The sermon was to be based on Luke 23:34, the words Christ spoke from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

  As I quickly made my way into the sanctuary, I glanced at the large antique clock that hung on the church wall. The time was 10:22 a.m.

  Chapter 4

  The Bomb Heard ’Round the World

  Sunday morning, September 15, 1963

  * * *

  I’m concerned about a better world. I’m concerned about justice; I’m concerned about brotherhood; I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate through violence. Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that.

  Martin Luther King Jr., “Where Do We Go from Here?”[7]

  I walked into the sanctuary, toward the stained-glass window of Jesus, his kind face and loving eyes focused on me, and that’s when I heard it. Boom! The blast shook the building.

  Thunder? I thought. Maybe a lightning strike?

  The sound was muffled, not loud and earth shattering like the bombs I had heard so many times when Klan members dynamited black homes and businesses throughout the city.

  Glass cracked and crashed to the floor, but I barely noticed. I just wanted to get out of there.

  What is happening? I asked myself.

  Someone shouted, “Hit the floor!”

  I dropped. Sprawled out flat in the aisle on the sanctuary floor, I still held the Sunday school reports in my hands.

  Seconds passed—one . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five. I heard no more sounds. No breaking glass. No movement. No voices. Just silence. Dead silence. More seconds passed—six . . . seven . . . eight . . . nine. Fear enveloped me. What is happening! For at least ten full seconds, no one moved. Nothing happened.

  Then I heard and felt on the floor beneath me a stampede of feet—moving, running, scurrying to escape the building. Jumping up from the floor, I ran to the nearby exit and looked outside.

  What is going on? Police cars were everywhere.

  How could they get here so quickly? The church was already surrounded, and police were putting up barricades on the streets around the building.

  Chaos ruled. Several church members stood outside with stunned expressions. Heads were cut and bleeding. Loved ones wiped their blood-wet faces. Mrs. Demand ran outside, her lower leg gashed by flying glass and her shoe filled with blood. Parents were frantically searching for their children.

  Now I knew for sure it was a bomb. I ran out the door looking for my two brothers. How could there be a bomb here? in my church? I could hardly comprehend such a thought. I had heard bombs go off in my neighborhood, but it seemed unfathomable that it could happen in this safe haven.

  I looked up at the stained-glass Jesus window that stood above me and searched for the face that had always brought me such comfort, security, and peace. The window was intact, its glass unbroken . . . except . . . except for the face of Jesus. The bomb had cleanly blown away his face. Nothing else. Just his face.

  * * *

  Outside the building, a large number of black folks were angry. People from the neighborhood and the nearby boardinghouse had heard the commotion and were now pouring onto the church property. They were ready to fight.

  “You bombed our church!” they screamed to no one in particular. “You hurt our people!”

  They struggled to get through the police-enforced boundaries. They didn’t know exactly who had set the dynamite, but they were desperate to get even, to strike out at someone—anyone.

  As black residents paced outside the church, they ranted and threatened. “We can’t let this pass!”

  But no fights broke out. Police kept tight control on the people, on the ugly chaos. Pastor John Cross walked through the crowd with a megaphone, tears streaming down his face, and begged the crowd to be calm and nonviolent. “The Lord is our Shepherd,” the pastor called out. “We shall not want!”

  Just then a thought hit me like a baseball bat. My brothers! Where are my brothers?

  I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could and run straight home.

  But where are Wendell and Kirk? They are my responsibility. I can’t go home without them.

  Shouting their names, I dashed back into the building and began to search for them. Rubble and broken glass littered the floor, but I barely noticed. I was thinking only, Where are those boys? I paused at the women’s restroom door but did not venture inside. It wasn’t even recognizable as a restroom anymore—there was just a gaping hole piled up with dirt and bricks.

  No, they wouldn’t be in here. They hate girls!

  Maybe they’re still in their Sunday school room, where I dropped them off this morning. Or maybe they are hiding in the men’s bathroom.

  I checked both rooms. No boys.

  They could be outside by now!

  I stepped outside into the confusion and racket. I felt panicky. My brothers seemed to have disappeared.

  Okay, one more time—the women’s restroom. That might have been the only place the boys could find shelter.

  As I leaned into the restroom doorway, all I could see was a huge pile of rubble, almost four feet high, in the middle of the tile floor. Ash. Dirt. Soot. And silence. No sound came from the rubble or from anywhere else in the room. No one’s in here, I thought as I turned around and ran back outside.

  In the midst of the confusion, I saw carloads of white people circling the church and then driving off with screeching tires. They were laughing and singing a little song: “Two, four, six, eight! We don’t want to integrate!” I was frightened. My parents never preached hatred to us children. I could not understand this action—the height of evil.

  To my relief, I saw my father across the street. He was behind a huge barricade, arguing with a police officer. He looked frantic. “Let me through!” he shouted to the officer. “I’ve got two children in there!” I was so glad to see him—that meant I could finally go home. I still didn’t know at that point if anyone had been hurt, but I believed my dad would help me find my brothers.

  Two
children? No, Daddy, three!

  Somehow my father managed to push through the barricade. I ran into his arms and screamed, “Daddy! I don’t know where Wendell and Kirk are. I’ve looked everywhere. I can’t find them!”

  “It’s okay, Carolyn,” my father shouted back above the racket. “Wendell’s in the car. He’s safe.”

  “But what about Kirk?” I cried.

  “I’m sure some of the church members took Kirk home with them.”

  My father drove us home. When we turned into the driveway, we saw Mama standing anxiously at the front door.

  “A man just called,” she told us. “He said, ‘I’ve got this little fella here with me. He won’t turn me loose. He says his name is Kirk. I found your number in the phone book under “Maull.” If you can come get him, I’ll keep him right with me until you get here.’”

  My parents jumped in the car and hurried to find Kirk.

  I later found out that after the bomb exploded, Kirk took off running outside. My brother grabbed the leg of the first person he saw—a man walking down the street—and held on tight. He absolutely refused to let go. Somehow the man got Kirk’s last name out of him. Since only three Maulls were listed in the phone book, he found our number and called us.

  Kirk became a quiet child after that September morning. He seemingly lost his desire for conversation. All his teachers told my parents, “Kirk’s such a smart child, but he never talks.” I believe the bombing somehow damaged my little brother. He was never quite the same.

  My brother Wendell took off running when the bomb exploded, too, and headed toward downtown. Driving back to the church from his weekend job, my father saw Wendell standing in the street. He stopped the car, hugged him tightly, and put the terrified boy in the car.

  * * *

  By noon that day, Mama and Daddy, Chester, Wendell, Kirk, Agnes, and I were sitting at home. Silent. Stunned. No one said anything. We knew a bomb had exploded in our church, but we didn’t know why. In our own lonely silence, each of us tried to make some sense of it.