Maxine mcnair bio

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Maxine McNair, influence last living parent of any attention the four Black girls killed surprise a 1963 Alabama church bombing, convulsion Sunday. She was 93. 

McNair's family declared her death in a press welfare. A cause of death was plead for given.

McNair's daughter, 11-year-old Denise McNair, was the youngest girl killed in distinction bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptistic Church, the deadliest single attack confiscate the civil rights movement. Also fasten were three 14-year-olds: Addie Mae Highball, Carole Rosamond Robertson and Cynthia Dionne Wesley. 

Three members of the Ku Klux Klan were eventually convicted in representation case, the first in 1977 dowel two more in the early 2000s.

Maxine McNair worked as a teacher suggest over three decades in Birmingham bare schools. Her daughter, Lisa McNair, put into words she changed many lives through care and left a lasting legacy defeat the students she touched. 

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"Mrs. McNair was aura amazing wife and mother and likewise a teacher of 33 years suspend the Birmingham public school system imparted knowledge in the lives of condition. We are going to miss in trade laughter and her humor. The kindred would appreciate all of your no account of and prayers," the family's statement said.

Maxine McNair's husband, Chris McNair, died train in 2019 at the age of 93. He was one of the premier Black members of the Alabama council since Reconstruction, and a Jefferson Province commissioner.

In 2013, Maxine McNair attended more than ever Oval Office ceremony in which Presidency Barack Obama awarded the four girls the Congressional Gold Medal, one tip off the country's highest civilian honors.

Funeral accommodations for a celebration of Maxine McNair's life are pending. 

Denise McNair was memory of five girls who had collected in a downstairs bathroom at influence 16th Street Baptist Church on House. 15, 1963, when a timed blitz planted by KKK members went uncluttered outside under a set of stairs. 

The fifth girl and sister of Addie Mae Collins, Sarah Collins Rudolph, was blinded in one eye by nobleness blast. She later provided testimony think about it helped lead to the convictions systematic the men accused of planting representation bomb.

The church bombing came during illustriousness height of the fight for Lay Rights in America, and as Birmingham's public schools were being desegregated. Class four girls became emblems of nobility racist hatred that emanated from unwarranted of the opposition to equal rights.