Act of Terror

By JAMES COLLINS

On Sept. 15, 1963, a bomb went off at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., killing Denise McNair, 11, and Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, all 14. It was a Sunday morning, and the four girls, dressed in white, were in the church basement, preparing to attend Sunday school and the monthly Youth Day service. As the panicked survivors fled from the explosion and police and ambulances arrived, the man convicted of the crime years later stood across the street enjoying the commotion.

In his documentary 4 Little Girls, which debuts on HBO on Feb. 23 at 9 p.m. E.T., Spike Lee sets out to tell the stories of the victims of the bombing and to explain why it happened when and where it did and the effect it had on the civil rights movement. The film was briefly in theatrical release last year, and has just been nominated for an Oscar. Shifting smoothly from the most poignant details of the girls' lives--Scout badges, a first pair of grownup shoes--to the actions of historical figures like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and George Wallace, Lee succeeds in giving a subtle, intelligent and moving account of an event that starkly pitches good against evil. In his public statements the director is often strident, but his films tend to belie this trait, and in this case, when full-bore indignation would seem justified, he allows the horror and injustice of the tale to emerge unforced. Moreover, the film looks wonderful, gracefully edited, and lighted with an almost pearly quality.

The narrative and moral center of 4 Little Girls is Chris McNair, Denise's father. Her mother and the relatives of the other victims provide heartbreaking testimony, but McNair has a gravity that provides ballast for the entire film. When, with his rich voice, he recalls how he explained to Denise why she couldn't eat at a segregated cafeteria, or discusses his favorite picture of her (taken with her Brownie camera in her bedroom as she clutches a blond doll), he conveys both deep pain and resoluteness.

The most terrible images in the film are the black-and-white postmortem photos of the girls, naked and caked with blood. But there are other unforgettable moments--old footage of the white tank that "Bull" Connor, Birmingham's notorious police chief, drove around the town; a recent interview with an aged George Wallace, who repeats over and over that his black attendant is his best friend; Carole Robertson's mother Alpha explaining how she has come to forgive.

The bombing, of course, had causes and consequences that went beyond the lives of the victims. For years the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth had led protests against segregation in Birmingham. Eventually, he called on King for help, and the demonstrations intensified. Robert Chambliss responded, hoping his act of terror, the 21st bombing in Birmingham since 1956, would leave blacks begging for segregation. In fact, the blast energized the civil rights movement. Lee's eloquent film does justice to the young martyrs and to those who guaranteed that the girls' deaths, while tragic, would not also be meaningless.

--By James Collins