While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age during the Civil Rights Movement

“My church served as the center of my life. I worshiped there. I socialized there. I even worked there part-time as a church secretary.”

In the opening chapters of While the World Watched, McKinstry describes the role of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in her life, her family’s life, and the life of her larger community. The church was a place of social and spiritual significance where McKinstry could be independent and exercise responsibility. Describing it as “the center of [her] life” indicates how deeply the church’s bombing would affect her and her community.

“It was years before we realized that his unwieldy rules were designed to protect us from the evil possibilities of the mean-spirited world around us.”

In this passage, McKinstry describes her father’s strict rules. Although she didn’t understand it at the time, many of his rules constituted an effort to keep his children safe from the racial violence and injustice that proliferated in Birmingham. Insisting that McKinstry never leave the house unless escorted by her brothers, for example, or forbidding his children from crossing the train tracks that led to the white side of town where notorious Klansmen lived seemed like impositions on his children’s freedom. However, looking back, McKinstry understands that the rules were in place to protect her and her siblings.

“About the only place he permitted me to go alone, unescorted by my brothers, was church. It was a safe place, and I had certain responsibilities there. I escaped to the church as often as I could.”

Here, McKinstry again discusses Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and the space’s presumed safety. In contrast with the outside world, church seemed like a safe haven, even to McKinstry’s hyper-protective father. This means that the attack on the church was all the more shocking and destabilizing.