Justice delayed: four black girls died in a 1963 bombing in racially divided Birmingham. Now the last suspect is about to go on trial.

• Author: McCollum, Sean
• Position: Times past - War on hate

Addie Mae Collins, 14, and her two sisters tossed Addie's purse around as they headed to Sunday school at the 16th Street Baptist Church, in the black part of Birmingham, Ala. Addie headed to the basement of the church, where she freshened up with other girls, then retied the bow on friend Denise McNair's dress. It was Sept. 15, 1963.

People in the church thought they heard thunder. Then the lights flickered, stained glass shattered, and dust fell from the ceiling. "We've been bombed!" a man shouted.

Searching in the basement, through a hole blown in the brick wall, black church members and white firefighters uncovered the burned bodies of four black girls: Addie; Denise, 11; and Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, both 14. Four white men were later identified as suspects.

The bombing was the deadliest single atrocity during the civil rights era. The deaths of children in a church shocked the nation. CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite discussed it in Spike Lee's 1997 documentary 4 Little Girls.

At that moment that that bomb went off, and those four little girls were blasted and buried in the debris of the church, America understood the real nature of the hate that was preventing integration, particularly in the South, but also throughout America. This was the awakening.

However much the country's conscience awakened, the wheels of justice have turned slowly. This April--nearly 40 years after the bombing--the last living suspect, Bobby Frank Cherry, will go on trial.

BIRMINGHAM: A CITY DIVIDED

In 1963, Birmingham found itself on the front lines of the civil rights struggle. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had called the city of 350,000 people "probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States."

The split between black and white was everywhere. Laws forbade "a Negro and white person to play together ... in any game of cards, dice, dominoes, checkers, baseball, softball, football, or basketball." Blacks and whites had to use separate water fountains and separate restrooms. No "colored people" served in the police or fire departments.

The Ku Klux Klan was the unofficial enforcer of these laws and traditions. The group, which believes whites are superior to blacks, was notorious for its white hoods, burning crosses, and terror tactics. With police often willing to look the other way, the KKK sought to intimidate blacks--sometimes with dynamite.

From 1956 to 1963, about 20 racially motivated bombings, none of them fatal, rocked...