On Sept. 15, 1963, 11-year-old Dale Long and his younger brother Ken were dropped off by their mother for a Youth Day at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.

A few hours later, around 11 a.m., Dale would emerge from the wreckage of the church in a frantic search for his brother after members of the Ku Klux Klan bombed the church.

Long recalls that Sunday beginning like many others before it. He and several other boys from his class were getting their instruments ready to play during church while quizzing 14-year-old Johnathan Jones about high school football.

“We were talking about who was going to have the best high school band, who was going to have the best football team, high school football. Because one of us was in high school, and everybody else was in grade school,” Long said. “So, we looked up to him as the elder of the bunch. And he had the authority because he had at least been to [high school] band practice a few times so that he could share with us his experiences, and we were listening to him.”

All of a sudden, Long said, the upstairs library they were in started to shake and the lights went out.