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Alabama is marking the 60th anniversary of one of the most heinous acts during the Civil Rights Movement, the 1963 bombing of a church that killed four Black girls.

Alabama on Friday will mark the 60th anniversary of one of the most heinous attacks during the Civil Rights Movement, the 1963 bombing of a church that killed four Black girls in 1963. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the nation's highest court, will give the keynote address at the remembrance Friday morning at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. The large, prominent church was targeted because it was a center of the African American community and the site of mass meetings during the Civil Rights Movement.

On the morning of September 15, 1963, Rev. John H. Cross Jr. and members of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, were preparing to start the Youth Day worship service when a bomb went off. “I will never forget that horrific noise,” said Barbara Cross, the reverend’s eldest daughter. An FBI investigation later discovered that four Ku Klux Klan members (KKK) had planted dynamite under a cement staircase outside of the church.

On the morning of Sept. 15, 1963, dynamite planted by Ku Klux Klan members exploded at the church, killing the girls and shocking the nation.

Was an FBI informant involved in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing?