A documentary of the notorious racial terrorist bombing of an African American church during the Civil Rights Movement.A documentary of the notorious racial terrorist bombing of an African American church during the Civil Rights Movement.A documentary of the notorious racial terrorist bombing of an African American church during the Civil Rights Movement.
- Nominated for 1 Oscar
- 9 wins & 11 nominations total
- Self - Denise's Childhood Friend
- (as Carole C. Smitherman Esq.)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaWas inducted into the Library of Congress' National Film Registry on December 13, 2017, the day after Doug Jones, the US Attorney who prosecuted the trial, was elected to the Senate.
- Quotes
Howell Raines: A day in 1957, in the afternoon, the evening newscast, there's a piece of film of a gang of white men beating Fred Shuttlesworth, in the street outside of Phillips high school where he'd taken his children. With chains they beat him to the ground. And the reason it was riveting for me, I was fourteen years old, was that the police said they couldn't find the men who did it. And I recognized one of the men. I knew who he was. I'd seen him at Jack Cash's barbecue and I knew the police hung out at Jack Cash's barbecue and I knew they were lying.
- SoundtracksBirmingham Sunday
Written by Richard Farina
Used by permission of Songs of PolyGram International Inc.
Performed by Joan Baez
Courtesy of Vanguard Records/A Welk Music Group Co.
By arrangement with Warner Special Products
To answer that question for those people, no matter how well-intentioned they are in their ignorance, Spike Lee has made this film. You cannot be human and not be moved by the terrible story of the sacrifice that these little girls made, nor the lasting effect it had on everyone concerned. In its own way, this story is every bit as important as SCHINDLER'S LIST, and in the wake of recent events--church bombings, racial profiling by the police, the dubious success rate of our penal system turning young black men into hardened thugs into corpses--it is more important now than ever before that stories like these are told, to help us understand why we can only change the direction our generation seems to be headed in, by looking back at where we've been and what it cost us to get to where we are now.
- cchase
- Apr 7, 2001
Details
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $130,146
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $13,528
- Jul 13, 1997
- Gross worldwide
- $130,146