Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently recounted the harrowing story of losing her childhood friend in the racial attack on the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., when she was just 8 years old, Reuters reports.
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"As an 8-year-old, you don't think about terror of this kind," said Rice, who recounted on Friday her memory of the bombing and its aftermath in remarks to a gathering of civic leaders in Birmingham as part of several days of events leading up to the 50th anniversary of the bombing on Sept. 15. Rice's hometown had become a place too dangerous for black children to leave their own neighborhoods, or go downtown and visit Santa Claus, or go out of the house after dark. "There was no sanctuary. There was no place really safe," she said. Rice's friend, 11-year-old Denise McNair, died in the blast along with 14-year-olds Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins and Cynthia Wesley. Their deaths at the hands of Ku Klux Klan members garnered national support for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Read more at the Huffington Post.
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