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folding chairs. I walked upstairs to the church office and found middle-aged Mabel Shorter unusually flustered as she laid down the telephone receiver.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Mrs. Shorter?”
    â€œAll these phone calls!” she said. “People have been ringing the phone all morning. But when I try to get more information, they just hang up.”
    â€œWho are they? What do they want?” I asked.
    â€œOh, I don’t know,” she said. “But they seem more like threatening calls than just prankster calls. The callers say they are going to bomb the church.”
    Mrs. Shorter was the nervous type. I felt she might be overreacting, so I mentally dismissed her comments.
    I didn’t think any more about the threatening phone calls. I just felt so proud Reverend Cross had asked me to be the Sunday school secretary on Sunday mornings. I’d held this job since the seventh grade. I would man the office, listen for the phone, open the week’s mail, greet guests when they came through, and compile the morning’s Sunday school report. I would also record the attendance and the amount of money contributed to church that morning. I felt so grown up.
    After the Sunday school lesson, the classes would all gather together in a large assembly before the morning service began. I would read the report summary out loud to everyone and make some necessary announcements before the superintendent dismissed everyone at 10:45. During those fifteen minutes before the next worship service, church folk would talk with one another, admire the babies, purposefully compliment and encourage the youth, and visit the restrooms.
    My friends and I would slip out of the church between Sunday school and the 11:00 a.m. worship service to drink Cokes at Mr. Gaston’s motel restaurant. This was a black-owned restaurant, the only place in the area that served blacks and allowed us to sit in a booth and have a waitress bring us a cold drink. We felt so grown up when we sat at a table; said, “Coca-Cola, please”; and waited for our drinks. We would each pay our thirty-five cents and then hurry back to the church.
    Some nine years before, Mr. Arthur George Gaston, the grandson of slaves and a popular self-made millionaire, had built the A. G. Gaston Motel on the edge of Kelly Ingram Park—across the street from the church—on some land he had bought years earlier. The motel provided a place for black Civil Rights leaders to stay, as well as other visitors to the city. No other motel in Birmingham would allow black visitors to eat or sleep there. Before the A. G. Gaston Motel opened, they had to stay in the homes of church members. Mr. Gaston hung a large Z-shaped sign from the top of the two-story part of the brick building. It read simply,
    A. G. Gaston MOTEL
    Air-Conditioned
    Before long, Daddy found out about our visits to the Gaston Motel restaurant, and he put an abrupt stop to them.
    â€œWhen you go to church,” Daddy said, “you stay at church until you leave to go home.”
    It was just another rule he added to the already long list of restrictions. So I didn’t leave church anymore and order Coca-Colas at the Gaston Motel.
    * * *
    I left the flustered Mrs. Shorter in the church office, distributed record books to each of the Sunday school classes, and then quietly slipped into my own classroom. Around 10:20, after I had collected all the children’s records, I headed toward the steps leading to the sanctuary to collect the adult Sunday school records. I paused and lingered a minute at the door to the girls’ restroom.
    â€œHey! Good morning!” I called to four of my friends who were primping in front of the restroom’s large lounge mirror. At that time, I didn’t know that five girls were in the bathroom. I didn’t see Sarah, Addie’s sister, who was in a separate area near the washbowls and toilets.
    The four girls—Denise, Addie, Carole, and