I’m Still Saying Her Name
Today I remember my friend Cynthia Wesley and the three other girls who died during the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing 57 years ago.
What stands out in my memory of Cynthia Wesley on that afternoon 57 years ago is the moment our eyes met.
It was a fleeting exchange, and yet in that instant I sensed my friend’s kindness and optimism. She was 14, I was 13, and on that warm Friday in mid-September it was possible to set aside thoughts of the cruelty and racial violence roiling our hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. We were just two kids, excited at the start of a late-summer
