Sixteenth Street Baptist Church

September 15, 1963. Four girls. An act of terror that changed a movement.

The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham is one of the most significant sites in American civil rights history. On September 15, 1963, a bomb planted by Ku Klux Klan members killed four young girls attending Sunday school: Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair, and injured twenty-two others.

In 2019, Encore worked with the church to create an interpretive exhibit telling the story of the bombing and its place in the civil rights movement. Working closely with church leadership, survivors, and family members, the design team developed a program that honors the memory of the four girls, contextualizes the bombing within the broader civil rights campaign in Birmingham, and preserves the voices of those who were present.

The church building itself was designed by Wallace A. Rayfield in 1911, which led directly to Encore's later commission to create the Wallace A. Rayfield Museum within the same structure.