It was 10.25 a.m., September 15th, 1963 when the church clock stopped. At least 15 sticks of dynamite had been thrown into the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Four black Sunday School girls were killed, 23 injured. The crime came only three weeks after Martin Luther King had led a march on Washington, and at a time when Alabama was seething with Ku Klux Klan activists.
Spike Lee has revisited Birmingham in his first, Oscar-nominated documentary, Four Little Girls. As a child who stayed with his grandparents in Alabama every summer, the bombing was a horror story he grew up with. At the time of its recent British release, Lee is standing in front of a mainly black audience at a cinema in Brixton talking about why he had to make the film. He says he wanted to look at the lives of the girls, what could have become of them, and what became of the city. He also looks at the lives of the four men suspected of their murder, and the lives of the community leaders who allowed it to happen. The film becomes a powerful examination of race relations in America. What Lee may have been less aware of when making the film is that it would be so horribly resonant in contemporary Britain.
But the audience is extremely conscious of the fact. It is Monday night, and the report into the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence has just been leaked. People will watch the film in light of all they know about the Lawrence affair and the acknowledgement of institutionalised racism within the UK Metropolitan Police Force. Four Little Girls introduces us to the victims. There are three 14-year-olds: Carol Robertson who danced the days away and was just about to play clarinet in her first concert; Cynthia Wesley who forgot to adjust her skirt before going to church that day ("You never know how you're coming back," chided her mother); reserved Addie Mae Collins so full of quiet love for life. And over there is inquisitive 11-year-old Denise McNair, who never understood why Daddy couldn't buy her a burger in a whites-only bar.
We see footage of the coloured-only and white-only water fountains, we are told about Dynamite Hill where prosperous blacks lived in smart new homes that were reduced to rubble by Klan bombs. The camera focuses on a lonely stone memorial: "May men learn to replace bitterness and violence with understanding." Denise's father Chris recalls the corrupt 1950s steel town of Birmingham as "the most segregated in the south", and says he thinks it was the most painful day of her life when he told her why he couldn't buy her that burger; he knew she felt bewildered and betrayed even though she couldn't put it into words. Denise's mother Maxine takes down the dolls and toys from the attic that haven't been seen for more than a decade. Among them lies the blood-marked slab of brick that was lodged in her daughter's head.
Lee says he felt he had to show photographs of the mutilated girls. He knew it would disturb people, possibly hurt those who knew them, but "we have to see the effect of that dynamite". Maxine was determined Denise should look her best for the funeral, so her hair was combed and re-combed over her head to hide the hole. "And she did look nice at the funeral." The film slowly leads us to the alleged killers. Four men had been seen scouting the church the previous night - all known Klan members. Witnesses came forward and were ignored. One of the men was known to regularly hang round the bar frequented by the police. It was estimated that at the time a third of the police were members of the Klan. For 15 years, no one was apprehended. In 1977, Robert Chambliss, "Dynamite Bob", was imprisoned for life. It is astonishing that it took so long to apprehend him - he seemed to spend most of the intervening years boasting about his racist killings.
Like the five suspected killers of Stephen Lawrence, the other three men still walk free. Lee names them in Four Little Girls. Since the film opened in America two years ago, the case has been reopened. The police have said they are not looking for new suspects, but none of the three men has been apprehended.
On the day of the killings there was a riot. Suddenly, students and children seemed to be leading the civil rights movement. Jesse Jackson says "a crucifixion was turned into a resurrection - new life, new energy and more determination." Six-hundred kids were arrested in a single day and held in makeshift prisons. Clergyman Andrew Young reveals how he was locked up for five days. He came home and told his distraught parents he'd been to jail. "What you been to jail for?" they asked. "I've been to jail for freedom."
On the night of the riot, a black 16-year-old, Johnnie Robinson, was killed by the police who claimed they had "fired over his head" when they saw him throwing stones at passing cars. Another boy, aged 13, was shot dead while riding a bicycle in the suburb of Birmingham.
The man responsible for maintaining order and apprehending the bombers was Birmingham's commissioner of public safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor. He ordered fire hoses to be turned on the demonstrators. The pressure of the water jets was like being whipped, and peeled the skin off demonstrators. "When Bull saw the inner strength or self-respect in a black person he went crazy," says Young.
Denise's school friend says it took her years to understand how the murders changed her life. "I'd lost complete faith in humanity, and I didn't know it." But perhaps the most astonishing discovery in Four Little Girls is that ultimately most family and friends have lost neither their hope nor their capacity to love.
Alpha Robertson, Carol's mother, says: "I worked hard not to feel anger and hatred, but I did. I had to work on it. Hating people wouldn't do me any good, it would hurt me more than them." Lee asks how her the anger expresses itself. And in an extraordinarily tender moment she tells him that's a cheeky question, her anger is her business.
Spike Lee returns to the stage to massive applause. Everyone who asks a question welcomes him with loquacious respect. Did Lee ever consider making Four Little Girls as a movie rather than a documentary? No, he says, he's seen how similar race films get distorted. He mentions Spielberg's Amistad, in which a white lawyer is transformed into the hero of a slavery story.
One person complains that the subject matter of Four Little Girls is not controversial. Lee says it is not up to him to create a controversy. "After Do The Right Thing, there was no way I expected people to throw trash cans through windows." The scene he is talking about is the most famous, perhaps most celebrated, in Lee's movies. Mookie, played by Lee himself, smashes the windows in despair and anger at the unflinching racism of his employer. It established Lee's reputation as an incendiary film-maker, though many critics today suggest he is only regarded as such because he is black; that he has forfeited any claim to radicalism by expressing his politics chiefly in terms of Nike ads, his limousines and entrepreneurial flair.
A hand goes up from the back. Who are the heroes of Four Little Girls? "The parents . . . because they decided to go on without bitterness and anger." Some of the audience would prefer a less conciliatory answer. They would like to see him in Mookie mode.
As the evening goes on, the questions become tougher, the debate more obviously focused on today. In Britain there have been 26 proven racially motivated murders since 1991. America is currently coming to terms with two high-profile murders - the decapitation of James Byrd and the police killing of unarmed Amadou Diallo in his hallway.
A man next to me has been fidgeting to ask a question for ages. He finally gets a chance, and it turns out to be one that strikes a chord. "This film shows nothing has changed. It could be about what's happening now or what was happening 100 years ago. What I see is that we're involved in a state of war. And although you may not have said it in so many words, the film tells us that war is continuing. I'd like to know if you agree with that."
Lee does agree. "What happened 35 years ago is still happening today. I'm a film-maker so my job is holding up a mirror to show the way things were, the way things are and possibly the way they can be. But as far as solutions go I don't really think that's my responsibility, and I don't have the answers. But hopefully if we prod people again and again and again people will wake up from their complacency."
One last question. An audience member refers back to Alpha Robertson's statement about having to learn to control her anger. "Do you think society deserves the humanity we show it?" he asks. Yes, says Lee. In the end, everyone has to live in society. He says the reason that it took so long to charge Robert Chambliss was because it wasn't in the interests of those with the clout to do so. "And the situation is the same here. Some things are just plain and simple. Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death in 1993, and here we are today about to join the next millennium and his killers have still not been bought to justice. Why is that? Because there's very little value placed on black life. Plain and simple."