4 Little Girls

The story of four young girls who paid the price for a nation's ignorance.

September 15, 1963. It could have been a regular day in the life of Americans everywhere. Instead it became a day that would change their lives without mercy. Spike Lee takes an in-depth look at one of America's most terrible crimes, and the impact it had on the civil rights movement.

When a bomb tears through the basement of a black Baptist church on a peaceful fall morning, it takes the lives of four young girls; Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Addie Mae Collins. This racially motivated crime, taking place at a time when the civil rights movement is burning with a new flame, could have doused that flame forever. Instead it fuels a nation's outrage and brings Birmingham, Alabama to the forefront of America's concern.

4 Little Girls features archival film footage, home photographs and comments by surviving family members. Interviews with local and national figures of the time include Bill Cosby, Walter Cronkite, Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young and Coretta Scott King, as well as a rare and revealing interview with former Alabama governor George Wallace.

From the director of Do The Right Thing, Malcom X and Get On The Bus comes a powerful documentary film that captures a time, a place and a way of life that would be forever altered by the death of 4 Little Girls.