While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age during the Civil Rights Movement

Jerome and McKinstry spent two years in Warner Robins, Georgia, before Jerome was transferred again. This time, he was given a choice: Chicago or Birmingham. Although McKinstry had complicated feelings toward Birmingham, it was her home, and she “longed to go back” (218). She hoped the city would be “friendlier and more accommodating” and imagined taking her children to public facilities that were no longer segregated (218).

After settling in, McKinstry decided to look for a job and was hired by BellSouth telecommunications company. It was 1978, 14 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, but McKinstry was the only Black person in her office. She was “shocked” and “disappointed” that integration was going so slowly. She didn’t feel particularly welcomed by her coworkers and often ate lunch alone. However, she focused on her family and doing her job well. Soon, McKinstry gave birth to her third child, a boy. Between the new baby, work, and family living nearby, life was busy and “happy.” McKinstry and her family rejoined Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, where she participated in the yearly memorials on the anniversary of the bombing.

Being back in Birmingham and at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, McKinstry sometimes felt like she had never left her hometown. However, the church had changed in some important ways. Membership numbers were still low, and the building needed renovations and repairs. Nevertheless, McKinstry felt at home in the church and Birmingham.

Unfortunately, there were certain “interracial incidents” that broke McKinstry’s “sense of peace and security” (219). The “community pool” in their integrated neighborhood was “private,” meaning that Black people were not allowed. Eventually, McKinstry and Jerome installed their own pool, which became the new “community pool.” Problems with integrated public schools continued. Black children and white children rode to school in separate buses because of daily fights, often started by white students posing as Ku Klux Klan members wearing white sheets. McKinstry had hoped her children wouldn’t have to contend with the same racial violence and oppression that she experienced and was alarmed at how little Birmingham had changed. She decided to send her children to private schools to avoid the problems.

McKinstry noticed that there were “two opposing mindsets” in Birmingham. One wanted to leave the past behind them and move into a future where all citizens were treated equally. The other insisted on “maintaining the old status quo” (221). McKinstry knew that many people, including her young friends, had died in the fight for freedom, and because of that, they “couldn’t afford to settle for the status quo” (221). Nevertheless, many in Birmingham were committed to honoring and remembering the past, and McKinstry was asked to do interviews about her experience in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. Jerome began to understand the extent of her involvement in the tragedy for the first time. He had long accepted her and supported her even without understanding the extent of her trauma, and she would need his support even more as she undertook “the next task God had in mind for [her]” (222).

By 2002, McKinstry’s children were grown, and she and Jerome still lived in Birmingham, where McKinstry was preoccupied with “our country’s race problem” (223). While the city of Birmingham was technically desegregated, many aspects of life remained unchanged, including “people’s hearts.” Before King’s death, he had turned his focus from “the civil rights era to the human rights era” (223), arguing that equality transcended issues of race. This idea resonated with McKinstry, and she traveled around the country giving speeches and working on various social justice projects. She also began studying social and economic justice information, learning that the US was the only member of the United Nations that had not supported the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. McKinstry wanted to be more involved and “prayed God would use [her]” (224). She began to feel “the Spirit of the Lord upon [her]” (224) and felt drawn to enroll in divinity school. She felt she had finally moved on from the tragedy of her past. However, she would have to relive the trauma of the church bombing one more time.

McKinstry had worked at BellSouth for over 20 years and was growing bored. She asked God for a sign that it was time for her to move on but realized she could not take a leap of faith with “a calendar,” so she presented a retirement letter to her boss.

A month before she was set to retire, McKinstry was surprised by a subpoena to appear as a witness in the State of Alabama v. Bobby Frank Cherry case. Shockingly, McKinstry was to be a witness for the defense, testifying on behalf of one of the men responsible for murdering her friends. In the days leading up to the trial, McKinstry experienced intense anxiety. All the “old fears” she thought were behind her resurfaced, and she felt like she was 15 years old again.

The days preceding the trial were terrible for McKinstry, as she experienced panic attacks and struggled to concentrate. En route to the courthouse, she prayed for the strength to face Bobby Frank Cherry. She was swarmed by reporters the minute she got out of the car, and Jerome covered her with his suit as he ushered her into the building. She was led to a holding room with the other witnesses while Jerome entered the courtroom. She was the only Black person in the room of witnesses, which included Cherry’s friends and family, and she wondered if “they, too, hated Black people” (230). However, the other witnesses greeted her courteously, and they all waited in silence as the witnesses were called out one by one.

Finally, McKinstry’s name was called. She walked out, reciting the Lord’s prayer in her head. Bobby Frank Cherry sat directly opposite the witness stand, and his eyes remained locked on her even as she tried to avoid his gaze. She answered the attorney’s questions as concisely as possible but still could not understand why the defense had asked her to testify. She saw the faces of her dead friends in her mind and was “assaulted” by memories of the bombing. She continued to answer the attorney’s questions calmly, but as she finished and left the stand, she worried that she might face violent repercussions from Ku Klux Klan members for her testimony. Cherry’s eyes were “shouting out silent death threats,” and as she left the courtroom, McKinstry looked one last time for some goodness in his face, but she saw nothing “but evil” (233). The jury found Cherry guilty of four counts of murder and sentenced him to life in prison. He continued to claim his innocence and died in prison in 2004.

McKinstry reflects that she might “have been completely justified to feel hatred, unforgiveness, and bitterness” (234) against Cherry and the other perpetrators of the bombing. However, she claims that “no life should be lived in hatred or unforgiveness” (234). She managed to forgive the men who killed her friends and “all the others who lived lives of hate,” allowing her to find “ultimate freedom” (235).

After McKinstry retired from BellSouth, a new opportunity arose. She was on the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Board of Directors for years and was involved in educating the public about the history of Birmingham and the civil rights movement. She felt God called her to “take his love outside the church walls” (235). Sixteenth Street Baptist Church had received many donations to repair the damage from the bombing but had since fallen into serious disrepair. It was “a mess,” full of mold and leaking windows. Repairing the church was a way to bring the community together and “demonstrate a tangible expression of interracial progress” (239). McKinstry began raising money, and donors eagerly gave almost $4 million. With the money, the church was able to begin the much-needed renovations. Next, McKinstry turned her attention to preserving the church’s legacy. She began the process of registering the building as a national historic landmark, making it eligible to receive federal funds.

Today, people from around the world visit Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, drawn by its role in the civil rights movement and its “legacy of hope, love and reconciliation” (240). McKinstry argues that “God is capable of redeeming even the ugliest and darkest moments from our past” (241), but facing the places that hold those painful memories is often necessary. McKinstry gives the example of Princeton Hospital, where both of her grandparents died. As an adult pursuing her seminary degree, McKinstry returned to the hospital, where she faced her own “unfinished business” while interning as a hospital chaplain. She was able to bring comfort to those who needed it, something she was denied when she was a girl caring for her dying grandmother in the hospital basement.

Losing her four childhood friends was incredibly painful for McKinstry. However, she reflects that God’s “beautiful” vision “for reconciliation” came out of the tragedy (242). She has found a calling in helping “people learn to work together and appreciate the diversity God created among us” (242). She has had opportunities to further this work in her community and the larger world. The need for reconciliation is no longer limited to cooperation between Black and white people but extends to “interactions between individuals” (242). McKinstry dreams of a world “where the lamb can truly lie with the lion and there will be peace” (242). She can now imagine her friends looking down from heaven and writes that all is well with their souls and her own.

McKinstry describes how she spent many years hating the Ku Klux Klan members that killed her friends. Her hatred and bitterness were “slowly destroying [her]” as she spent years reliving the terrible trauma of the bombing. She turned to alcohol to numb her pain, but her true healing could not begin until she let go of the hatred she kept holding onto. One day, she prayed to God for the strength to let go of her substance use disorder and forgive those who had killed her friends.

McKinstry calls forgiveness “a spiritual act.” She knows that God created all individuals, even the hateful Klansmen who bombed the church, and he loves everyone equally, even if he doesn’t love all their actions. Just like Jesus forgave the men who crucified him, McKinstry realized that she needed to forgive the bombers. She believes God has called on everyone to love and care for their neighbors, seeing the good in everyone and “forgiving them when they hurt or offend us or someone we love” (267-8). Most importantly, McKinstry argues that “genuine love […] never sits back and watches” (268). To heal the world, we must engage in simple acts of kindness and reach out to and stand up for others. She recounts the story of Catherine “Kitty” Genovese, who was stabbed to death in New York City while 38 neighbors watched from their windows and did nothing. Loving our neighbors means protecting them and getting to know them.

After so much violence and suffering, McKinstry “doubted that anything good” could come out of Birmingham (269). However, in the late 1990s, a Birmingham attorney developed the Birmingham Pledge, “a personal commitment to recognize the importance of every individual, regardless of race or color” (270). Tens of thousands signed the pledge, which received global recognition and indicated a hopeful movement toward ending hatred and discrimination.

McKinstry worked hard to teach her children about the struggles of the civil rights movement and “the gift of forgiveness” (274). People are often amazed by her capacity for forgiveness, but she claims that God “has filled [her] heart with an overflowing love for people” (275); her story has become an example of “how love can overcome hate” (275).

Reflecting on the book’s title, McKinstry suggests that the world spent many years “passively” watching as people hurt one another. Now, it is time “to take action.” Legal segregation has ended, but racial violence and prejudice still exist. To combat this, we must work personally, changing one heart at a time. It is time to “stop watching and begin healing” (276).