BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA ¨C Half a century ago in the deeply Southern city of Birmingham, a racially motivated attack on a black church left four young girls dead and helped galvanize a civil rights movement that changed voting laws across the United States.
For those with ties to that deadly event in Alabama, Wednesday¡¯s shootings in a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, another deeply Southern city, echoed the tragedy and compounded the frustration that more progress has not been made.
¡°Now these people in South Carolina are going through what my parents went through,¡± said Lisa McNair, 50, the niece of one of the girls who died in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.
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