She is most famous in history for the circumstances of her death. On
September 13, 1963, she and three other girls, Addie Mae Collins,
Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson were in the basement of The 16th
Street Baptist Church preparing for their youth service when sixteen
sticks of dynamite (planted under a stairwell) blew up and the four
girls were killed. This tragedy is credited as the event that awakened
America to the severity of racial hatred in the south that was
preventing integration. The murders went unsolved for more than a
decade until in 1977 Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss was convicted of
the murders.