Attacked in places most sacred, congregations struggle on
The synagogue was spared blood, but the explosion on that morning in 1958 rocked a Jewish congregation whose backing of the civil rights movement had long sown fears of retaliation.
"The sanctuary was packed that Friday night" immediately after the synagogue bombing in Atlanta, recalls Alvin Sugarman, a college student at the time who years later became the reform congregation's rabbi.
Members of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, had to rebuild both the congregation's structure and psyche after a bomb planted by Ku Klux Klansmen ripped apart the building and killed four black girls gathered for Sunday worship on Sept. 15, 1963.
"If these cruel and tragic events can only awaken that city and state — if they can only awaken this entire nation — to a realization of the folly of racial injustice and hatred and violence, then it is not too late for all concerned to unite in steps toward peaceful progress before more lives are lost," President John F. Kennedy said.
Today, light from a memorial window donated by the people of Wales still casts a blue glow over the sanctuary's upper balcony.
Strangers often attend worship; some even show up at intimate Bible or prayer meetings like the one being held at Charleston's Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church when a young white man allegedly intent on harming blacks opened fire.
[...] what you can do is build around that wound.
Because you always remember that it's there.
[...] Melissa Fay Green, whose book "The Temple Bombing" chronicled the Atlanta attack, says the role public support played in reassuring congregants then leaves her hopeful Charleston worshippers might eventually find comfort from those near and far.