Long cannot forget the day his friends died

Dale H. Long tells the story about the bombing of the
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on Sept. 15, 1963, in
Birmingham, Alabama., at the home of Delores Elder-
Jones in Garland, Texas. (Photo by Wiley Henry)

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the final installment of a two-part series about Dale H. Long, who scurried to safety when he was 12 years old to avoid the possibility of death, which his four little friends couldn’t escape.

 

Dale H. Long’s father was working a second job at the A.G. Gaston Motel around the corner from Sixteenth Street Baptist Church when it was being reported that the Klan had succeeded in dynamiting their target — a worship center — on Sept.15, 1963, in Birmingham, Ala.

The 11 a.m. service had not begun when it was discovered after the blast that 11-year-old Carol Denise McNair and 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Dionne Wesley and Carole Rosamond Robertson had been killed. 

“He'll be here pretty quick,” Long told his grandmother’s friend who had shepherded a small group of children to safety, including a younger brother, Kenneth. “Meanwhile, I’ll take care of him.” 

It wasn’t long before Long spotted their father running down the sidewalk with fierce urgency. “I've never seen that man run like that,” he says. “A police officer tried to stop him. Maybe the same one who tried to stop me.”

Like Long, their father ignored the officer. He was determined to get to his boys. “He ran right past him and got to us, hugged us like he’d never done before. He had tears in his eyes, because he had experienced the same thing a few months prior.”

Birmingham in the sixties was a dangerous place for Black people. Segregation was the order of the day and bombings were common. The Klan didn’t spare the A.G. Gaston Motel either. It was dynamited on May 11, 1963.

Long learned later via radio reports that 27 people had been taken to the hospital and four little girls were killed. “They were my friends,” he says, remembering them fondly. “It was not a casual acquaintance. We were friends.”

Carole Rosamond Robertson’s funeral was held at St. John A.M.E. Church on Sept. 17, 1963. Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair and Cynthia Dionne Wesley were eulogized the next day at Sixth Avenue Baptist Church. 

Long tried to attend the homegoing services at Sixth Avenue Baptist Church. “It was too many people. They wouldn’t let me in,” he says. “But I could hear Dr. King’s eulogy on the PA system.”

After their funeral, Long witnessed the pallbearers loading the three coffins of his friends into hearses. Dr. King was standing nearby, he remembers, about 10 feet away. “I'd never seen anything like that,” he says. “I was 12 years old.”

Long’s memory of that fateful day in September hasn’t waned over the years. At 73, he still recalls the fury after the Klan unleashed hell in Birmingham, the aftermath of pain and suffering, and the terrible loss of his friends.

Long graduated from high school in 1970 and matriculated at Texas Southern University on a music scholarship. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1974. He and his wife Ellen have been married for nearly 50 years.

A survivor of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing, Long has moved on. His professional career includes the NASA Space Shuttle Program, Texas Instruments, the City of Garland, the City of Dallas, etc.

Honors, awards and citations have been bestowed upon him. Now retired, he finds time to volunteer, mentor young people, and keep the memory of his friends alive by telling the story of that tumultuous day in September.

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