While The World Watched by Carolyn Maull McKinstry

"While The World Watched" By Carolyn Maull McKinstry is a very very powerful book.  The author was actually in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church that was bombed in 1963 which killed 4 young girls (one happened to be Carolyn's best friend).  She writes about her life growing up during Jim Crow laws, the bombing, her helping during the Civil Rights Movement, her struggles with alcohol, and the trials of the bombers.  She wrote details about the bombing I had not heard about and even at the end gave us list of some of the old Jim crow laws.  This book is very powerful and I plan on using it in my homschool curriculum.

I really would like to see more people read this book it really helped understand the civil rights movement of the south.  See I know I am white (technically mixed raced but that's beside the point) girl from a small Pacific Northwest area but what I do know about that time era I learned from a former black panther party member who mentored me when I was 15.  So I did know some of another person stories of what happened in that time frame but not from the southern view point. So I really appreciated Carolyn Maull McKinstry's knowledge.  What really made me mad reading this book is that I still can hear some of the same type of racism being said in the area I live in except its more hidden than it was in the Jim crow days.  Yes as a nation we have came a long way from the 60's civil rights movement but still have work to do.  Especially as Christians as we still have a lot of segregated churches and why is that?  In small areas of the country we still let racism fester under the surface which does bubble up sometimes, why?  We are all one in Christ and we are all related as we all come from Adam and Eve.  Racism makes me mad and its sad to know that it is still out there on all sides.  If you can't tell by my rant that I highly recommend this book then I am sorry.  This was not even one of the books I was required to write a blog post on but to me the book is so important I needed to write one on it.