Never Forget Birmingham

by Keith Rice, Ph.D., Historian/Archivist, Tom & Ethel Bradley Center - November 03, 2026

The Tom & Ethel Bradley Center continues its core mission to document the stories of the overlooked and underrepresented communities not only in Southern California but also nationally and internationally. The Center’s John Kouns Collection is archived at Special Collections & Archives. John Kouns was both a social justice activist and a photographer who played an important role in photographing the Civil Rights and United Farmworkers movements during the 1960s. After his discharge from the navy, John Kouns graduated from San Jose State in 1955, attended the New York Institute of Photography, and worked for the United Press International (UPI) in San Francisco. He left UPI in the late 1950s to freelance and do industrial photography. In August 1963, he left San Fransico and drove to Washington, D. C. to participate in and photograph the March on Washington. 

Instead of returning to California, after the March on Washington, Kouns went to Birmingham, Alabama. In the 1960s, the United States experienced an overwhelming amount of violence and a wave of hate and bigotry against the African American community, especially in the South. It harkened back to the end of the Civil War and the birth of the white supremacist terrorist hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. As of this writing, we are living in similarly oppressive times. People in governmental positions of power are attempting to erase or re-write people, places, and events historically significant to this country, because they do not align with an imaginary America that exists for them. The bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama represented America at its worse.

In Birmingham, John Kouns would stay at the YMCA not far from 16th Street Baptist Church. When traveling in the South, Kouns used the Unitarian Church as a “kind of oasis” because owners of vehicles from California or New York could encounter problems. Kouns was in the Unitarian Church on Sunday, September 15, 1963, when the minister announced the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. Kouns immediately drove to 16th Street and documented the devastation of the bombing that killed four young Black girls: Carol Denise McNair (11), Carole Robertson (14), Cynthia Morris Wesley (14), and Addie Mae Collins (14). Kouns also attended and documented the victims’ families, civil rights leaders, and the community as they entered and exited the funeral services. 

The Bradley Center relies heavily on the support and input from the community to ensure that subjects and descriptions are accurate. This blog is inspired by the Bradley Center’s friend and supporter, Donzaleigh Abernathy, daughter of civil rights leader Reverend Ralph David Abernathy. Donzaleigh has graciously donated her time to help Bradley Center identify subjects in the civil right images. If Donzaleigh cannot identify anyone, she will call people from the movement on Facetime to see if they can identify subjects. For the Birmingham images, Donzaleigh called Sarah Collins. When Collins identified people in the images for the 16th Street Church bombing, she would occasionally say that she was in the hospital during the funerals.

Sarah Collins was the fifth child in the basement of the church along with her sister Adie Mae, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Morris Wesley. Sarah Collins had pieces of glass embedded in her face and was blinded in her right eye from the blast. She spent months in the hospital recuperating. She is often overlooked in the history of the bombing. During the Facetime call, the connection dropped off, at which time the Bradley Center staff and interns realized who this person was who was identifying people, and the room went silent for a moment. When they reconnected on Facetime, the staff expressed their condolences to Collins, and she graciously continued to identify family and friends in images made during one of the most misguided times in the history of this country. After meeting Collins on Facetime, I felt this was a necessary blog to write, and it was extremely difficult.

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Post tagged as: bradley center, photographs