http://www.dallasnews.com/lifestyles/223800_wicf_26liv.ART.html Where I come from: Dale Long

11/26/2000

As told to Bryan Woolley / The Dallas Morning News

On Sept. 15, 1963, a bomb explosion tore through the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., killing four young girls. Two men, including one living in Mabank, Texas, have only recently been indicted for the murders. Two other suspects have died. Dale Long, then 11 years old, was in the church when the bomb exploded. He's now a community outreach coordinator for the city of Dallas and a civic leader in Garland, where he lives with his wife and two daughters.

I was born in 1952. I grew up in Birmingham. I went to grade school and high school there. My maternal grandparents were big members of the 16th Street Baptist Church. It's a huge church, one of the oldest in Birmingham. As a child growing up, that's all I knew. Church was every Sunday. My mother and her sister grew up in that church, and my brother and I did, also. We participated in youth activities. The Easter plays, the Christmas plays. We played in the church orchestra. In the summer we did Bible School.

The church is situated on the edge of downtown Birmingham, right across the street from Kelly Ingram Park, which in the '60s was the nucleus of the civil rights demonstrations. That's the park where Bull Connor used the fire hoses and the dogs.

-- Anonymous, November 27, 2000

Answers

Link for full story.

LINK
http://www.dallasnews.com/lifestyles/223800_wicf_26liv.ART.html

-- Anonymous, November 27, 2000

Chilling and inspiring if you read the whole thing. Odd combo without a war you you can identify with. Was in first year at a JC when those little girls were murdered and didn't understand the war being fought.

Good find.

-- Anonymous, November 28, 2000