John H. Cross Jr. ( January 27 , 1925 &ndash; November 15 , 2007 ) was an American pastor and Civil Rights activist . He was best known as the pastor of the 16th Street Baptist Church , an African American Baptist congregation in Birmingham , Alabama , at the time of church 's racially motivated bombing in 1963 . The bombing , which ripped through the church and killed four young girls , became a rallying cry for the Civil Rights Movement and propelled the problems of racial segregation in The South into the national spotlight . Cross spent much of the rest of his life working for racial reconciliation in the South
racially motivated bombing
16th Street Baptist Church bombing
John Cross Jr.