Remembering, Resisting, and Reclaiming Our Stories

On September 15, 1963, the world witnessed one of the most horrific acts of racial terrorism in U.S. history. Four little Black girls—Addie Mae Collins (14), Denise McNair (11), Carole Robertson (14), and Cynthia Wesley (14)—were killed when white supremacists planted a bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Their church was more than a place of worship—it was a headquarters for the civil rights movement, a sanctuary where a community organized for freedom, dignity, and the dismantling of Jim Crow.

The bombing was not only an attack on Black children—it was an attack on history, on truth, on the right of a people to live and remember freely. The girls’ lives were stolen, yet their sacrifice fueled the moral urgency that pushed forward the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This history is not abstract; it is the soil from which today’s struggles for justice grow.

And yet, forces of censorship and erasure work tirelessly to strip this history from classrooms, from bookshelves, from public discourse. Politicians and pundits who rail against “wokeness” are engaged in the same project of silencing and distortion. When a political leader recently declared that America “cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE,” what he really declared was his fear of truth-telling. To be “woke” has always meant to be awake to injustice, alert to the ways racism, sexism, poverty, and oppression still shape our daily lives. It is not broken—it is necessary.

What is truly “broke” is a system that bombs Black children in churches and then tries to erase their memory. What is broke is the comfort of a nation that denies its history while repeating its harms. What is broke is leadership that demonizes awareness instead of embracing accountability.

To remember September 15, 1963 is to reject this erasure. It is to say that the lives of Addie Mae, Denise, Carole, and Cynthia will never be forgotten, and that our communities will continue to resist the silencing of their story. History does not disappear because it is inconvenient; it becomes sharper, more urgent, and

more necessary to teach.

Liberation demands memory. It demands we protect the stories of our ancestors, our martyrs, and our movements from those who would whitewash them. To be awake—to be “woke”—is not a weakness. It is an act of defiance, a declaration of love for the generations before us and the generations to come.

On this day and every day, let us hold fast to the truth: we must know our history to fight for our future.