◆ SpookStack

September 17, 1963 t On the night of September 15, 1963, an examina- tion was made of damage to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, 1530 6th Avenue North, Birmingham, Alabama, and of the area surrounding the church, which church was bombed at 10:22 a.m., the morning of September 15, 1963. The characteristics of the damage, the distribution of debris inside, and outside the church, and the type of debris, indicated a high order type explosive, such as dyna- mite, had been placed on the ground in front of a double window of the church and under an outside concrete stairway that partially covered the double window. The stairway leads from the ground level to the second floor level and is located at the northeast corner of the church. The double windows are in a basement room of the church known as the ladies lounge and are covered on the outside by heavy gauge protective wire screens, aS are all the basement windows of this church. The floor of the lounge was approximately four feet below the window sill. The window sill was 8" above ground level. The church foundation was 30" thick at this point and consisted of a 10° stone facing over a 20" thick brick and masonry wall. The explosion fragmented the outside concrete stairway. Directly beneath the stairway and opposite the window sill, in the ground, was a crater measuring 53 feet wide, 2 } feet deep, and it extended from the wall of the church to the inner edge of the sidewalk, a distance measuring 3 2/3 feet. The explosion fragmented the solid limestone window 8111 and tore out the foundation of the church immediately beneath the window sill. The window glass, window frames and heavy wire gauge protective screens were shattered and blown into the ladies lounge. Ex~ tensive damage was caused in the interior of the ladies lounge. A large hole, approximately 7' x 7', directly opposite the window and i6 feet from it was blown out of a partition. forming one side of the lounge. This wall was constructed of two thick-~ nesses of brick and covered with wet plaster. At the time of the examination, the floor of the lounge was covered with 6". of debris consisting of brick, stone, concrete, glass, mortar, — 9/15/63 Birmingham, Alabama BH 157-352 Special A 9/17/63