Spike Lee’s: Four Little Girls (1997) (102 min)

February 26, 2015 - 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM

On September 15, 1963, four happy, intelligent African American adolescent girls, Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Rosamond Robertson, went to the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama to attend Sunday school. In the middle of the lesson, a bomb blast rocked the church, killing the girls, and sending a shockwave through the black community that now is considered to have launched the Civil Rights movement of the ’60s; it is a shock that continues to be felt today.

Using a combination of archival photos and interviews with the slain teens families, peers and interviews with such historical commentators as Walter Cronkite and politicians such as former Governor George Wallace, director Spike Lee has created an unforgettable, powerful documentary that successfully tells the emotional tale of the girls and their families, while also providing a larger look at the long range sociopolitical effects of the senseless tragedy and at the pervasiveness of racism that allows the perpetuation of such tragedies.

Free to the Public