'' Carry Me Home : Birmingham , Alabama , the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution '' , written by Diane McWhorter and published by Simon & Schuster in 2001 , won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction . McWhorter grew up in Birmingham , Alabama , and recounts being about the same age as the girls killed in the September 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church , though she " was growing up on the wrong side of the revolution " . While four black girls were murdered in that day 's bombing , McWhorter recalls that the only repercussion of the killings on her white high school was the cancellation of a play rehearsal . '' Carry Me Home '' describes how bigotry was prevalent among whites and her interviews and reviews of documents from the civil rights era showed " the long tradition of enmeshment between law enforcers and Klansmen " , ranging from local and state police to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
September 1963 bombing
16th Street Baptist Church bombing
Carry Me Home (book)