BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Shortly before four dead bodies are rushed into Hillman Emergency Clinic at University Hospital Betty Ruth Speir, a medical resident, notices police flooding the hallways. Armed with shotguns and rifles, the officers station themselves outside the emergency room.

The date: Sept. 15, 1963.

Dr. Speir, who arrived at work around 6 a.m. that day, wouldn't leave for another 72 hours. Her time would include comforting the families of the bombing victims and a run-in with a white supremacist who made an attempt on her life.

"From the minute the bombing happened, it never left me," said Dr. Speir, 79.

The bomb that demolished the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church downstairs lounge, shattered the sanctuary's stained-glass windows, hurled large chunks of stone into nearby automobiles and buildings, injured dozens of parishioners, and killed Addie Mae Collins, 14; Denise McNair, 11; Carole Rosamond Robertson, 14; and Cynthia Wesley, 14.

The explosion marked a turning point in the civil rights movement and became a catalyst for change in the United States and ultimately prompted global efforts for equality and human rights.

Today, 50 years later, the Sunday school will teach the same lesson taught that day. And at 10:22 a.m., the exact time of the explosion, the church's bell will toll. This service will cap a week-long commemoration that drew a number of visitors and dignitaries to Birmingham for Empowerment Week -- celebrations that included speeches, panel discussions, concerts, festivals and, more, most revolving around the bombing's anniversary.

Also today, U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are scheduled to mark the 50th anniversary of the bombing with an appearance at the Alys Stephens Center.

Filmmaker Spike Lee, left, greets Maxine McNair, right, and Chris McNair, center, parents of Denise McNair, during a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2013. The Congressional Gold Medal was awarded Tuesday to 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, and 11-year-old Denise McNair. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

National leaders paused to honor the memory of the four little girls multiple times in the days leading up the anniversary. On Tuesday, a bipartisan group of congressional leaders hosted a ceremony at the Capitol's National Statuary Hall to posthumously bestow the Congressional Gold Medal. It is Congress' highest civilian honor.

"Their names remain seared in our hearts," said House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California.

Lisa McNair, Denise McNair's sister, described the congressional ceremony as "bittersweet."

"But it was victorious that they were honored and will forever be remembered," she said of her sister and the other three bombing victims.

Some members of Congress were also at a similar Gold Medal Ceremony honoring the four girls on Friday at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

Beyond Birmingham

The church bombing and the deaths of the girls, coupled with the 1963 citizens' marches in Birmingham, were harbingers of change for racial justice in the United States that eventually led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and ultimately initiated international efforts for equality and human rights.

The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was the first black church to organize in Birmingham in 1873. Throughout its history, many prominent black residents were members, and noted dignitaries often spoke at the well-known place of worship. In the 1960s, Sixteenth Street served as a center of activity for the growing movement against racism in Birmingham and across the South. Because of that, it became a target.

At the time of the explosion, about 200 parishioners were in the building, which was wrecked by an estimated 15 to 19 sticks of dynamite planted by Ku Klux Klansmen under the east side stairs adjacent to the basement wall.

"We were all in Sunday school classrooms when the bomb went off," recalled Sunday School teacher Effie J. McCaw, who was in the building when the blast occurred. "I told the children in my class to lie on the floor. The teachers kept the congregation from panicking. We couldn't get to the children in the basement. Everyone walked outside in a hurry. There was no screaming, only crying."

The Rev. John Cross, then-pastor of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, was in the women's Bible study class, which met on the Sixteenth Street side of the building. He was leading a lesson his parishioners didn't know they would soon need.

"It was a wonderful lesson, too: a love that forgives. People seem to have love, but they don't know how to forgive," he told historian Horace Huntley in 1997 for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute's Oral History Project.

A battle zone

The bombing was not the only tragedy in the Birmingham area on that day. Many members of the black community were shaken when they heard that 13-year-old Virgil Ware had died at the hands of two young white men, Michael Lee Farley and Larry Joe Sims.

Ware was killed on his way back from Docena, a community just outside Birmingham, where he and his brother James had gone to buy a bicycle for Virgil's paper route. James Ware Sr., the father of Virgil, died at age 90 just days before the 50th anniversary of his son's murder. Mr. Ware did live to see his son inducted into Birmingham's Gallery of Distinguished Citizens in August.

On that same tragic Sunday, another black resident, 16-year-old Johnny Robinson, was shot in the back by police for throwing rocks to protest the church bombing.

Johnny Robinson (left), 16, and Virgil Ware, 13, were both killed in racial violence in the Birmingham, Ala., area on Sept. 15, 1963, the day a bomb killed four girls at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.

After the church bombings and shootings, Birmingham took on the appearance of a battle zone, with 300 state troopers, 450 police officers, 150 sheriff's deputies, and 300 federalized National Guardsmen patrolling the streets.

President John F. Kennedy expressed the nation's pain in a statement one day after the bombing:

"I know I speak on behalf of all Americans in expressing a deep sense of outrage and grief over the killing of the children yesterday in Birmingham, Ala. It is regrettable that public disparagement of law and order has encouraged violence, which has fallen on the innocent. If these cruel and tragic events can only awaken that city and state -- if they can only awaken this entire nation -- to a realization of the folly of racial injustice and hatred and violence, then it is not too late for all concerned to unite in steps toward peaceful progress before more lives are lost."

On the Tuesday after the bombings, a funeral was held for Robertson. About 450 people, including 50 whites, attended the service, which was held at St. John's A.M.E. Church. The Rev. Cross said the church bomber "did not only bomb the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, did not only kill these lovely, innocent girls, but somehow the whole world was shaken. People everywhere died."

The day after that, three coffins covered with floral arrangements were the focal point as a sea of somber faces that filled every available spot at Sixth Avenue Baptist Church. Funeral services for Collins, McNair, and Wesley brought out a crowd of about 6,000, including more than 200 clergymen--about half of them white.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., speaking from the black-cloth-draped pulpit, called the girls "the modern heroines of a holy crusade."

"We must not harbor the desire to retaliate with violence. We must not lose faith with our white brothers," said Dr. King, who predicted that the deaths "may well serve as the redemptive force that brings light to this dark city . . . may cause the white South to come to terms with its conscience."

Conscience awakened

The events of Sept. 15, 1963, awakened the conscience of Birmingham, the nation, and the world. Since then, significant strides have been made toward equality -- the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the fall of South African apartheid in late 1980s and early 1990s, and the election of the United States' first African-American president, to name a few.

Nonetheless, civil rights activists were recently disappointed that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down by a 5-4 vote a key part of Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act in a case that originated in Alabama's Shelby County. They have said the high court decision was a civil rights setback and is evidence that much work remains.

In the dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that a "sad irony" of the majority's decision is that it strikes down a part of the Voting Rights Act that has been successful at preventing discrimination.

"In a year that marks the 50th anniversary of many milestones in the Civil Rights Movement, the Supreme Court's decision dealt voters a huge setback to justice," Alabama Senate Minority Leader Vivian Davis Figures, D-Mobile, said after the ruling.

But for those who remember the girls and the civil rights achievements born in Birmingham, there remains hope that each commemoration of the senseless loss of four promising young lives 50 years ago in Birmingham can serve as a catalyst for continued progress for civil and human rights.

Dianne Braddock, Robertson's sister who lives in Maryland, was among relatives in the audience when her late sister was honored at the nation's Capitol with the Congressional Gold Medal last week. Her message to honor her sister's memory, she explained to USA Today on Tuesday, is that change springs eternal.

"As I speak to different groups of students, I tell them the lesson in this is that children made a change. It is in within their power to make a change," Braddock said.

See more stories and photos on the civil rights movement in Alabama at AL.com/civilrights.

