On Sunday morning, September 13, 1963, four girls were murdered by four members of the Klu Klux Klan in a bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The church was targeted because it was often used as a meeting place by civil rights leaders Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy. Judy Garland, feeling the pain of the mothers who lost their children in the bombing, gathered her friends Carolyn Jones and June Allyson, and their daughters, and called a press conference where, on behalf of mothers everywhere, she demanded an end to the the hate, the racism, the senselessness, and the stupidity. She was outraged, she was angry, she was frightened, and her wail was heard, understood, and felt, by mothers the world over. Initially, one of the murderers was only given a hundred dollar fine and a six month jail sentence. But history caught up with him, and in 1977 he was retried and sentenced to life in prison. Another of the murderers was dead by 2000, when the other two were FINALLY tried and convicted. The names of the girls killed in the bombing are Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley.
