Four Little Girls - Birmingham’s Trauma Narrative

• In Event: 545 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtable Session.
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Collective Memory

Abstract

In this paper I examine the events surrounding this bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama with an eye to explaining why this event has become so central to memory of the Civil Rights Movement. I consider why this bombing has become a nexus from which whites in Birmingham distance themselves from their segregationist pasts. Using the cultural theory of trauma (Alexander, Eyerman, Giesen, Smelser & Sztompka 2004), I examine why the “four little girls” are remembered but the two boys, killed on the same day in 1963 have been all but forgotten. My analysis includes a discussion of the representation of the bombing perpetrators, the individualizing of the girls, and commemoration of the event.

Author

• Sandra K. Gill, Gettysburg College