Carolyn McKinstry knows about the dangers of extremism in America. She lived it.
McKinstry was the Sunday school secretary at the 16th Street Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, when the church was bombed by white supremacists on 16 September 1963, killing four Black girls – Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Roberts, all 14, and 11-year-old Cynthia Wesley.
McKinstry, who was 14 at the time, remembers it was Youth Day at the church and the lesson of the day was “A Love That Forgives”. She spent that Sunday morning collecting attendance and financial records from classes. McKinstry answered the church phone just seconds before the bomb went off in the church basement.
