I wanted to write the book, Birmingham, 1963 because, although the story of the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church had been covered in other children’s books about the Civil Rights movement, there had not been a book devoted entirely to that tragic event which claimed four young girls’ lives.
The girls were ages 11 to 14 who were killed in the bombing. Because the event itself was so jarring, I wanted the book to be illustrated with photographs. Photographs make documentary history more real to kids so the book is illustrated with photographs.
On the verso page, there’s a photograph from the Civil Rights Movement and on the recto page, there’s always a photograph of some commonplace item from a girl’s life in the 1960’s. On the recto page, there might be a pair of patent leather shoes, some records, 45’s as they were called, berets or jacks, things that a girl might have in her life at that time.
History is only relevant to the extent that it is made personal so I let the poem be in the voice of a ten-year-old girl — someone who happened to be experiencing what would be in the life of a ten-year-old, a pivotal event. She was experiencing her tenth birthday which I can remember for me was a big deal because I got into double digits.
On this day when she’s marking her tenth birthday and was also to present, perform in the Youth Day program at church, this tragic event happens which forever mars that day in her eyes. She sees her father cry for the first time. She sees the bomb claim the lives of four girls whom she looked up to — they were older than she.
She sees her city kind of torn apart by violence in the aftermath of the bombing, and can’t understand why. The girls’ story is what is really one poem in the book, but then the book itself ends with four poems it attributes to the girls who actually died in the bombing. I wanted to end by calling their names, recognizing them, paying tribute to them.