Had you heard of the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963?

Four members of the Ku Klux Klan had planted a dynamite bomb equipped with a timer so it would explode during the church service the next day. The church was targeted by the white supremacists because it was frequently used as a meeting place for Civil Rights leaders and was active in the ongoing Civil Rights campaign. Do you think it was especially cruel to explode a bomb during the "Youth Sunday" service, when many children would be present and participating? (Addie Mae Collins and Denise McNair were to sing in the choir. Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley were to act as ushers.)

Pictured here are the 4 victims - Denise, Carole (often misspelled as Carol), Addie, and Cynthia. Although Denise was buried elsewhere, Addie, Carole, and Cynthia were buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Birmingham. The funeral was attended by over 8,000 mourners, and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr gave the eulogy. His speech included the words, "Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the America dream". Do you think those words still ring true?

In 1998, Addie's sister, Sarah Collins Rudolph (pictured), became frustrated by the neglect and poor maintenance of Addie's grave and decided to move her remains to a mausoleum at Elmwood Cemetery. (Sarah was in church with Addie when the bomb exploded. Then 12, she lost an eye, and spent 2 months in the hospital recovering from her injuries.) When the workers attempted to exhume Addie's body, they discovered her plot was empty! Digging a few feet further away, they found a casket, but it contained the remains of an elderly person with dentures. How would you feel if you were Sarah, and had lost your loved one a second time? Please choose all that apply.

Since burial records had been destroyed in an office fire, for 19 more years Sarah coped with the anguish of not knowing where Addie's remains were. And then in 2017, the family's pro-bono attorney, John Hall, hired Randy Fields and Mike Mattingly from Advanced Radar Technologies, who volunteered their services to search for the missing casket using ground sensing equipment. What do you think of people who offer their services for free?