While the World Watched

While the World Watched, by Carolyn Maull McKinstry, is the story of the author's remarkable experiences during the Civil Rights movement. Her march under the leadership of Martin Luther King and her later experiences as a speaker about the fight for racial equality pale in comparison to the place in history she never asked for.

On a Sunday morning in September, 1963, Carolyn stuck her head into the girl's bathroom at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. After chatting for a moment with the girls inside, including her best friend, she continued with her usual task of compiling Sunday School reports. If she had stayed in the room three minutes longer, she would likely have shared the fate of her friends. Local men had planted a bomb which went off shortly before worship was to begin that day, killing the four girls Carolyn had just been talking to. Another girl, farther away from the blast, was blinded and badly injured.

For years, Carolyn was haunted by survivor's guilt, something no one talked about in the 1960s. She grew to adulthood shadowed by the deaths of her friends and convinced she would one day be killed by the same hate-filled people who were continuing to plant bombs in homes and businesses around town. Any black citizen who stepped beyond the accepted limits could expect delivery of a bomb, a beating, or a fire in short order. Authorities did little or nothing to discourage these crimes. Even if a suspect was arrested, the all-white jury often found them not guilty despite overwhelming evidence.

When Carolyn reached adulthood, she found herself descending into a depression she didn't understand. Having been discouraged from talking about the violence around her and the people she had lost, she wasn't aware of the effect that years of terror and silent grief had had upon her. She hit rock bottom (or as close to rock bottom as someone with a loving family and supportive husband can) and then turned her life around. She went from drinking all day to divinity school. Since then she has devoted her life to speaking to others around the world about God and about racial conflicts that still continue.
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While the World Watched is not a polished book. It reads like a journal, or a personal message written to be shared with a daughter or granddaughter. McKinstry's words are interspersed with excerpts from Martin Luther King's speeches and letters. King spoke at Sixteenth Street Baptist and had a profound effect on McKinstry. His words give shape and context to the story of a young girl's struggle to find justice and peace in a world that often lacks any.