On the 62nd anniversary of the 1963 bombing, a new center opens beside 16th Street Baptist Church — and Birmingham confronts its past to shape its future.
By Tanna M. McGuire
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — It began as a Sunday like any other. On Sept. 15, 1963, four girls slipped into the basement of 16th Street Baptist Church in their Sunday best. Minutes later, a bomb planted by Ku Klux Klan members tore through the wall and killed them.
Addie Mae Collins. Denise McNair. Carole Robertson. Cynthia Wesley. Four names. One morning. A wound the nation could not look away from.
Sixty-two years later, on that same date, the ground beside the church opens again. This time, it opens as an invitation.
The 16th Street Education and Visitor Center welcomes its first guests September 15, in the heart of Birmingham’s Civil Rights District. The roughly 13,000-square-foot building sits steps from where the girls died. It has been about five years in the making. Its purpose is not to reopen the wound. It is to ask what the city does with it.
Community leaders and project partners gather around the table to review development plans for the 16th Street Education & Visitor Center. Their collaborative discussion marks an important step forward, shaping a space that will welcome visitors and honor the neighborhood’s rich history for generations to come.
“Our mission is to take those lessons from the past — the things we’ve learned and cannot forget — and carry them forward to help inform how we need to live and how we create the society we wish for,” said Terrence Brown, Ed.D., the center’s executive director.
For a city once known for fire hoses and police dogs, the date carries weight. Birmingham did not choose to be a battleground for civil rights. It became one. And in the decades since, it has worked, slowly and imperfectly, to become something else.
Brown believes the center marks that turn.
“The building is up,” he said. “Now what are they going to do with it? For me, that is the transformative part.”
A visit that asks something of you
The center is built to reach the senses. Sight. Sound. Smell. Visitors move through spaces that shift between conversation and quiet.
A communal-style restaurant offers the comfort of gathering around a table. Music and programming draw from traditions that shaped the Black church and the civil rights movement. Some rooms invite talk. Others invite stillness.
That balance is deliberate. Brown knows the history here is not easy.
“Some of the content that we deal with is heavy,” he said. “But there are stories of triumph and overcoming. You need time to process all of that.”
The heart of the experience is a two-story interactive “river wall.” There, visitors choose from about 60 commitments — plain actions they can take in their own communities. Brown said each one is written to be clear to a fourth grader and still challenge an adult.
The idea is simple. Learn from the past. Reflect on its meaning—act where you live.
“We can make what you’ve experienced here at 16th Street not a one-and-done,” Brown said.
Programs that gather people
Two signature programs anchor the visit.
Harmony Group Sing brings as many as 150 people together to sing songs rooted in faith and perseverance. Skill is not the point. Presence is.
“I don’t care whether you can sing a little bit or sing a lot,” Brown said. “One hundred and fifty voices can change the world — or at least change a heart and mind.”
Quilt of Many Hands pairs a cultural tradition with service. Participants gather around quilting tables to share stories and stitch. The finished quilts go to children in foster care through nonprofit partners.
“What greater way to show love to people that you may not know?” Brown said.
A place for students
Schools sit at the center of the mission. Programming has been aligned with Alabama courses of study for students in grades four through 12. Organizers plan to work with administrators, teachers, parents and students to shape those experiences.
Brown said the center also wants to remove the barriers that keep classrooms away, including transportation and admission costs. A visit should not depend on a family’s means.
The center also plans partnerships with colleges and universities. Among them is programming built around Wallace A. Rayfield, one of the nation’s earliest licensed Black architects and the man who designed 16th Street Baptist Church itself. His work still stands. His story deserves telling.
Brown brings his own classroom roots to the effort. Before joining the center, he spent more than a decade as director of arts education for Jefferson County Schools and served as a high school principal.
Open to everyone
The center is operated by the 16th Street Educational Enrichment Foundation, an organization tied to the church in mission and values but governed separately. Brown said it is meant to welcome all.
“Some faith, no faith, little faith, no faith at all — you’re welcome,” Brown said.
Access is a priority. The building is ADA compliant. Through a partnership with the nonprofit KultureCity, the center adds sensory-inclusive accommodations and staff training. A Spanish-language tour is planned for 2027.
That reach matters in a city still learning how to hold everyone at the same table.
Brown compares the vision to the old Southern front porch, or “stoop,” where generations once gathered to hear stories from parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and neighbors.
“In this day and time, I think it is easy for us to forget the stories that held us together,” Brown said. “We have come to the intersection where we need storytellers to stand up and tell these stories.”
Speaker series, book discussions and oral histories are also planned. Brown hopes the center becomes a place Birmingham turns to when the community needs to come together.
Located in Birmingham’s Civil Rights District, the roughly 13,000-square-foot 16th Street Education and Visitor Center will expand the visitor experience in one of the nation’s most significant civil rights landmarks through education, arts, community programming and opportunities for reflection.
“I realize that everybody wants a better world,” he said. “Sometimes we just don’t agree on how to get there.”
What this city carries
Birmingham has spent 62 years living beside this history. It walks past the church on the way to work. It teaches its children. It carries the weight, and the pride, of a place that helped change a nation.
The new center does not erase what happened here. It cannot, and it does not try. What it offers instead is a next step. A way to turn grief into purpose. A way to turn memory into action.
Four girls never left that church. This city has spent decades making sure the world remembers them.
Now, beside the place where they were lost, Birmingham opens a door and asks a quiet question of everyone who walks through.
What will you do with history?
The 16th Street Education and Visitor Center opens Sept. 15 and is located at 1512 6th Avenue North, Birmingham, Alabama 35203. More information is available at 16thstreetevcenter.com.
