Virgil Ware: The 5th Victim On The Day The Alabama Church Bombing
September 15, 1963, is remembered for the four little girls killed in the bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church. But the violence did not end when the smoke cleared. That same day, 13-year-old Virgil Ware was riding a bicycle with his brother when they encountered two white teenagers. One of them fired a gun, striking Virgil. His brother tried desperately to get him home, but Virgil did not survive. He was a child. He wasn’t inside the church. He wasn’t participating in a demonstration. Yet he became another young life taken amid the racial violence that engulfed Birmingham that day. History remembers September 15 through the faces of four little girls and rightly so. But there was also a boy. His name deserves to be spoken alongside the others. Addie Mae Collins. Cynthia Wesley. Carole Robertson. Denise McNair. Virgil Ware. Five children. One terrible day.
source: historalegacy
