As the nation remembers the four-year anniversary of the Sept.11 attacks, the anniversary of another terrorist attack looms.
While the number of lives claimed as a result of this crime does not compare to those lost in 9/11, the crime is no less tragic.
Sept. 15 marks the 45th anniversary of the 1963 bombing of Birmingham, Ala.'s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.
The blast, which was the equivalent of 10 sticks of dynamite, killed four young girls and injured 20 others.
The victims were Denise McNair, 11, and Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, all 14.
David Madlock, a political science instructor, said the bombing was done to try to stunt the social gains African-Americans had begun to make at that time.
"Historically, it's seen as one of the last attempts to assert white supremacy after the Brown v. Board decision and other events in the South that favored more black inclusion into American society," he said.
After the bombing, an FBI investigation concluded that Klu Klux Klansmen Robert Chambliss, Herman Frank Cash, Bobby Frank Cherry and Thomas Blanton Jr. were responsible.
As early as 1964, federal agents were in favor of prosecuting the suspects, but then FBI director J. Edgar Hoover disagreed.
Hoover felt a conviction in a southern court was not possible. Hoover was said not to support the Civil Rights Movement, because he thought both domestic and foreign communists controlled it.
In 1968, the FBI dropped its case without any charges being filed.
Today the perception of what terrorism is depends upon whether or not the crime is carried out by Islamic extremists.
Madlock said this perception is inaccurate.
"African-Americans have always seen acts perpetrated against them as terrorism," he said.
Madlock also said that the constant worries of violence minorities lived with have caused them to have a different attitude than whites when terrorist acts occur.
"African-Americans, especially those in the South, have always lived under some threat of terrorism," he said. "Therefore, they're not taken aback as much when acts of terrorism are committed."
Justin Merritt, a sophomore finance major, said he's not as upset as many when events such as 9/11 happen, because it happens far away from where he is.
Ryan Poe, freshman journalism major, said everyone shares the perception of what constitutes a terrorist attack.
"Blowing up people is blowing up people," he said. "It doesn't matter what the color of your skin is."
In 1971, then Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley reopened the case of the Birmingham church bombing.
Six years later, Chambliss was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
The case was reopened again in 1996, and in 2001 Blanton was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. In May 2002, Cherry was convicted and received the same sentence as Blanton.
The fourth suspect, Cash, died in 1994 without any charges being filed against him.
Madlock said that he doesn't believe that the current generation is forgetting this nation's troubled past in terms of race relations. However, he does express caution.
"I think there's more danger of the younger generation thinking that the struggle for civil rights is over," he said. "That's a failure of the older generation. We've taught that it started at a particular time and stopped at a particular time. It started in 1619 and is continuing today."
