Alabama will mark the 60th anniversary of the 1963 church bombing that killed four Black girls

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — 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 in 1963. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the high court, will give the keynote address at the remembrance Friday morning at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. 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. 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.