Shotgun shell found outside the16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham

Peters Cartridge Company, American, 1887 - 1944 · September 1963

On September 15, 1963, just two weeks after the August 28th March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, white supremacists (members of the Ku Klux Klan) planted a bomb under the steps of hte 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The explosion killed four young girls attending Sunday school. Within hours, a crowd of over two thousand individuals gathered at the church. According to the donor, local police fired their shotguns into the air to disperse this crowd, leaving shells on the ground. In the face of such violence, the determination to continue organizing intensified.