Little Girls (aka Four Little Girls), HBO presentation in association with Spike Lee’s 40 Acres & a Mule production, concerns the four young girls–Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson–who were murdered when a former Ku Klux Klan member (and his associates) blew up their Baptist church in 1963.
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Lee first became interested in making a film about the Birmingham bombing in 1983, when he was a student at New York University. After reading a NY Times Magazine article about the incident, he wrote to Chris McNair, the father of Denise, one of the victims, asking for permission to tell her story on film.
Weaving archival photos, newsreel footage and home movies with contemporary interviews, producer-director Lee lets the powerful material tell the story, while supplementing the background that led to the tragedy.
His docu tries to balance the witnesses’ personal and painful memories of the tragedy with a more poignant and factual political expose.
4 Little Girls demonstrates that the murders and their consequences were some of the defining moments of the civil rights movement, and as such succeeded in raising collective awareness and galvanizing the whole country.
My Book: See Chapter on Black Cinema
The Klu Klax Klan and Governor George Wallace failed to grasp at the time that their insane brutality was producing heroes, victims, and martyrs. As Reverend Jesse Jackson notes succinctly, “the Burmingham bombing turned a “crucifixion into a resurrection.”
The gifted Ellen Kuras was the feature’s cinematographer and Terence Blanchard composed the music.
A local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan placed bombs at the 16th Street Baptist Church, setting them off as Sunday services prepared to commence on the morning of September 15, 1963.
Four young girls, ranging in age from 11 to 14, were killed in the explosion, which also caused additional injuries.
The deaths provoked national outrage, and, the following summer, the US Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
The bombing is marked in history as a critical and pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement.
The film covered the events in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963 related to civil rights demonstrations and the movement to end racial discrimination in local stores and facilities.
In 1963, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. arrived in town to speak at the funeral of the four young girls. The community met at the 16th Street Baptist Church while organizing their events. The demonstrations were covered by national media, and the use by police of dogs and pressured water from hoses shocked the nation. The large number of demonstrators arrested resulted in local jails filling capacity.
The film ends with the trial and conviction in 1977 of Robert Edward Chambliss, known as Dynamite Bob, as main person responsible for the bombing, though he was only one of four Klan members involved.
The film also references black churches being set on fire in Birmingham in 1993, indicating that there are many things that need to change.
Oscar Context
Lee’s nonfictional was nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar, but it did not win.
Critical Status:
The film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
Credits:
Directed by Spike Lee
Produced by Lee, Sam Pollard, Daphne A McWilliams
Cinematography Ellen Kuras
Edited by Sam Pollard
Music by Terence Blanchard
Production companies: 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks; HBO
Distributed by HBO
Release dates: July 9, 1997 (U.S.) Sep 6, 1997 (Canada)
Running time: 102 minutes
Budget $1,000,000
Box office $130,146
