Remembering the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing and Virgil Ware

This year, 38 years ago, two events shaped history in the goal of equal rights and liberty for all in America. They were events that showed the ugly that festered inside of America, an ugliness based on a terroristic hate and race supremacy. These events were the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham and the murder and lynching of Virgil Lamar Ware. The common element was that the both occurred on killed Sept. 15, 1963 and both involved children.

On that Sunday, a white man was seen placing a box under the stairs outside of the church, which had become a meeting-place for civil efforts to register African Americans to vote in Birmingham.

A few minutes before 10:30 am., the bomb exploded killing four girls who were in the church attending Sunday School: Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole Robertson (14) and Cynthia Wesley (14). In addition, twenty-three other people were also hurt by the blast.

A witness identified a known member of the Ku Klux Klan, Robert Chambliss, as the man who placed the bomb at the but found not guilty of murder and received a hundred-dollar fine and a six-month jail sentence for having the dynamite.

On the same day the 13 year-old Ware was found lynched and mutilated in Birmingham. Virgil Ware had just entered the eighth grade at the all-black Sandusky Elementary School near his home in suburban Pratt City. While working on a paper route with his two brothers. Larry Joe Sims and Michael Lee Farley, both 16, had attended a segregationist rally that day drove by the brother firing two bullets hit Virgil in the chest and cheek, making Virgil Ware the sixth and final black person to be killed in Birmingham that Sunday.

Although African Americans can applauded some overt change with the election of Barack Obama and the erection of a tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. in Washington, D.C., we must recognize the disservice we actually do ourselves by forgetting about those who gave blood for what we supposedly have currently. To forget in memory yet celebrate in symbols is a defeatist mantra that serves no proactive or productive utility. For it will always be as Dwight David Eisenhower stated, “A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”

Our privileges have us more knowledgeable of celebrity and avarice than education and self-determination. Thus if such is the case, the principals symbolized in the actions of those before us and the words of Dr. King are long gone and may be never to return.

A Tale of 2 Quaterbacks

As you read this, especially if you are a fan of football, you may be still marveling at the gridiron feat composed by one Michael Vick of the Philadelphia Eagles against the Washington Redskins. It was indeed a work of art comparable to Tchaikovsky’s Overture of 1812, Prince playing each of the 16 instruments used to make his first album at age 16 or martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail. His six touchdown sonata included 300 yards in the air and an astonishing five touchdown drives in a row to begin the game.

Unfortunately, as opposed to pronouncing this historical accomplishment on its own merits, the America I live in as expressed via commentary, prefers to couple this even with his past of dog fighting and incarceration (that serviced his criminal debt) albeit more than two years past. I find this strange and have asked the question why this is so? Yes, Vick did commit a crime and he also paid for it, but in comparison, Pittsburg Steelers’ Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, seems to have been given a pass although his iniquities have occurred during the current year and are recurrent. I did not hear one mention of his problem behaviors during the Steelers beat down by New England this past Sunday Night. But for Vick, it is a continuous theme.

I suspect that the main reason why Vick is always discussed with his past and Roethlisberger is not, is rooted in the fabric of American history. In America, African descendents have always been considered less than white people and even equated to livestock in the US constitution. Consequently, dogs were regarded in higher esteem by whites than slaves or the African Americans trough the times of Jim Crow up until the civil rights movement – maybe this is why dogs were released on protesters during that period. Thus it would not be unreasonable to assert that Mike Vick and what he represents humanly is not as important or valuable as a dog to many. Likewise, that it is more heinous to fight and kill a dog than molest, assault or have forcible sex with women- in particular under-aged college girls, with GBI documented bodily fluids of her alleged attacker.

Now I may be wrong but my recollection of history is not. America has always saluted rapist, drug addicts and other sultry types if they were of European descent. Thomas Jefferson (who raped his slaves), Rush Limbaugh (drug addict), Andrew Jackson (Indian killer) and now Ben Roethlisberger.


I guess it is easier for folks to speak about redemption and forgiveness than it actually is to do such. Folk just need to get off Vick’s phallus, but I know they will not, for they do not desire to see him as the MVP and in their mind he will always be behind Tom Brady, Matt Ryan and even Ben Roethlisberger; for he will never have blond hair or blue eyes.