From the Director’s Desk: A Necessary Pilgrimage
Cathryn McGill, NMBLC founder and director, reflects on her recent, necessary pilgrimage to historic sites and museums focused on the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama.
by Cathryn McGill
NMBLC Founder & Executive Director
There's an old adage about jokes that fall flat: “Well, I guess you had to be there.” But when it comes to understanding the horrors of hate—lynchings, brutality, and systemic oppression perpetrated on people of color in the Deep South—reading about it is not enough. You have to be in the feeling place of it. You have to be there.
The Weight of History
Right before St. Patrick's Day in 2025, I traveled to Birmingham, Alabama—ground zero for hate. I stood in the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church, where four young girls—Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley—were murdered in a racist bombing at 10:24am on Sept. 15, 1963.
Ground Zero for Hate
This is not ancient history; I was alive then. People still worship in that church. Though it has been restored, the air is thick with something beyond memory. There is a weight, an ethereal presence that brought me to tears. Just look at what hate did. No matter how many times I had read their story, it did not become real until I was standing there.
Walking Through the Past
Across the street, I walked through the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. The exhibits were powerful, but the most poignant was the display of glass and brick remnants from the church bombing and the bronze statues of the slain girls—forever young.
In Dr. King’s Footsteps
The next day, I traveled down the road to the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church and the parsonage where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his young family lived when he began his civil rights journey at just 24 years old. Some of the original furniture remains.
I pictured him at his desk, the gravity of his mission already forming. I imagined the terror when the parsonage was bombed, his wife and two children inside. They survived that day—at least physically. Across the street now stands a parking garage, an intrusion on sacred ground. When I asked a volunteer tour guide how she felt about it, she simply shrugged and said, “Well, we don't like it, but what can we do?”
Bearing Witness
Finally, braving a Category 5 storm warning, we made our way to the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum. The lynching memorial, with thousands of names inscribed, left me searching for the women, the names marked only as “unknown.” Whose daughter, sister, or mother was remembered as “unknown”?
A Necessary Pilgrimage
Since returning home, a few people have asked if I had fun in Alabama. Fun? No. But necessary? Yes. I needed this pilgrimage to remember my “why.” Mary McLeod Bethune’s words echoed in my spirit: “If we have the courage and tenacity of our forebears, who stood firmly like a rock against the lash of slavery, we shall find a way to do for our day what they did for theirs.”
As I process everything, I find myself reaching back to the hymns of my youth. “Like a tree that's planted by the waters, I shall not be moved.” Some may not understand this. Maybe you, too, had to be there. It changed me. Go. And holla’ back.
Learn More
Watch the trailer for Just Mercy, a film about the life of lawyer, social justice activist, and law professor Bryan Stevenson:
Learn more about the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Sites in Montgomery, Alabama:
