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Gene Patterson's most famous column: 'A Flower for the Graves'
David Fahrenthold Retweeted:Gene Patterson's column after the 1963 Birmingham church bombing is always worth revisiting, but especially in the aftermath of the attack in Pittsburgh and this past week.
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A grieving relative of one of bombing victims in Birmingham, Ala., Sept. 15, 1963 at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church is led away after telling officers that some of his family was in the section most heavily damaged. Man just in back of him is holding a shoe found in the debris. At least four persons were known to have been killed. (AP Photo)
Gene Patterson's most famous column: 'A Flower for the Graves'
BY EUGENE PATTERSON · JANUARY 13, 2013
This column by Eugene Patterson, then editor of the Atlanta Constitution, was originally published in that paper on September 16, 1963 and was read aloud that night on the "CBS Evening News" with Walter Cronkite. Patterson died Jan. 12, 2013 at the age of 89.
A Negro mother wept in the street Sunday morning in front of a Baptist Church in Birmingham. In her hand she held a shoe, one shoe, from the foot of her dead child. We hold that shoe with her. ... Every one of us in the white South holds that small shoe in his hand.
It is too late to blame the sick criminals who handled the dynamite. The FBI and the police can deal with that kind. The charge against them is simple. They killed four children. ... Only we can trace the truth, Southerner -- you and I. We broke those children’s bodies. ... We watched the stage set without staying it. We listened to the prologue unbestirred. We saw the curtain opening with disinterest. We have heard the play.
....
This is no time to load our anguish onto the murderous scapegoat who set the cap in dynamite of our own manufacture. ... He didn't know any better. ... Somewhere in the dim and fevered recess of an evil mind he feels right now that he has been a hero. He is only guilty of murder. He thinks he has pleased us.
We of the white South who know better are the ones who must take a harsher judgment. ... We, who know better, created a climate for child-killing by those who don't.
....
Eugene Patterson
A grieving relative of one of bombing victims in Birmingham, Ala., Sept. 15, 1963 at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church is led away after telling officers that some of his family was in the section most heavily damaged. Man just in back of him is holding a shoe found in the debris. At least four persons were known to have been killed. (AP Photo)
Gene Patterson's most famous column: 'A Flower for the Graves'
BY EUGENE PATTERSON · JANUARY 13, 2013
This column by Eugene Patterson, then editor of the Atlanta Constitution, was originally published in that paper on September 16, 1963 and was read aloud that night on the "CBS Evening News" with Walter Cronkite. Patterson died Jan. 12, 2013 at the age of 89.
A Negro mother wept in the street Sunday morning in front of a Baptist Church in Birmingham. In her hand she held a shoe, one shoe, from the foot of her dead child. We hold that shoe with her. ... Every one of us in the white South holds that small shoe in his hand.
It is too late to blame the sick criminals who handled the dynamite. The FBI and the police can deal with that kind. The charge against them is simple. They killed four children. ... Only we can trace the truth, Southerner -- you and I. We broke those children’s bodies. ... We watched the stage set without staying it. We listened to the prologue unbestirred. We saw the curtain opening with disinterest. We have heard the play.
....
This is no time to load our anguish onto the murderous scapegoat who set the cap in dynamite of our own manufacture. ... He didn't know any better. ... Somewhere in the dim and fevered recess of an evil mind he feels right now that he has been a hero. He is only guilty of murder. He thinks he has pleased us.
We of the white South who know better are the ones who must take a harsher judgment. ... We, who know better, created a climate for child-killing by those who don't.
....
Eugene Patterson
