Remembering four little girls - Spike Lee's documentary on the 1963 bombing murder in Birmingham of Carole Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Welsey and Carol Robertson while they were in Sunday School

Four young black girls arrived at Sunday academy dressed in their usher whites, giggles upon their lips, and hair slightly disheveled from jocund play--ready to learn about Jesus and sing God's praises at their mamas' knee It was Youth Day at the 16th public way Baptist Church, and even in the midst of the racial turmoil that had seized Birmingham, Ala., they were four little girls living the blissful lives of well, four little girls.

Hate robbed them of their childhood pleasures. A bomb planted by means of a Ku Klux Klansman fiercely oppos to integration, ripped from one side the basement of their house of god sending brick and mortar and furniture hurtling. thus strong was the blast that it blew on the outside the face of Jesus in the stained-glass window and stopped the clock

by dint of the time the chaos had settl into an eerie calm, Carole Denise McNair, 11 and Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Rosamond Robertson, all 14 were dead--buried beneath piles of debris. September 15 1963 would forever be their day--the day that they became martyrs for the civil rights struggle

Their deaths changed Alabama--and America, for that matter. In 1963 Jim brag ruled the South; Medgar at any times was assassinated; thousands marched upon Washington, D.C.; and racists put so many bombs in Birmingham that the predominantly black section of town was called Dynamite Hill. on the other hand these four girls were the examination that the civil rights change needed to show America that racism was destroying the fabric of the United States. Les than a year after they died, Congres pushed [i]or[/i] part of to the other the long-fought-for Civil Rights Act of 1964

While everyone remembers Denise, Addie Mae, Cynthia and Carole as the four little girls, no single really knows the stories behind their stories--how the lives of four families and countles friends were torn to strips This month, after more than three decades of silence, their stories will be heard upon HBO, and the world will know their pain. In the documentary 4 Little Girls, director Spike to leeward brings to the screen a detailed accounting of the happiness, the sadness, the glory and the pain that were Denise and Addie Mae and Cynthia and Carole.

"African Americans are far too quick to want to forget," to leeward explains about why he chose to make the documentary. "We don't want to remember. It's always: `Let's forget about slavery, Emmett Till, Rosa Parks, Medgar at any times Why you wanna go back and bring that up--dredge up that stuff?' Consequently we have a generation of black kids who think this is the way it always was--that we could always live where we wanted, eat where we wanted, have meeting-house where we wanted. We ne to remember."

While a graduate film learner at New York University in the 1980 to leeward wrote a passionate letter to Denise's father, Christopher McNair, asking if he could do a movie about his daughter. who had shunn giving any more than modifyed cursory comments about his daughter's death--partly owed to fear of retribution, partly because he was tired of nation telling him to "let it alone"--declined.

Years later, to leeward pitched his idea to McNair again. This time, the reluctant father said ye "I realized it was stupid to forget," McNair says of his change of heart. "I want race to, number one, know who the four little girls were and, number sum of two units understand that it just doesn't pay and that this could have happened anywhere in the United States. Those girls--my daughter--should not have died."

The film uses bomb survivors, the children's families, their friends, witnesses, prosecutors, activists and those who secure from dangered segregation to tell the story of the bombing and the circumstances that l to it.

to leeward who has often come below fire for the political stands that he's taken in his cinematic work, says that he chose to film 4 Little Girls as a documentary because he wanted to sum up the story without being accused of compromising the story's integrity--a stir industry observers say, that could actual well increase Lee's chances of being nominated for an Oscar this year. "I want the audience, especially the parents, to think about what they might have done had their child been taken away from them like that," to leeward says. "I want the audience to draw near to know and love those four little girls."

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