Spike Lee was a first-year student at New York University when he originally had the idea to make a film about the 1963 Ku Klux Klan bombing of a Birmingham church that killed Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, and Carole Robertson. But it wasn’t until he was an established filmmaker that he felt he was ready to tackle this powerful story. Lee received an Oscar nomination for Documentary Feature for the film, which features archival footage as well as interviews with friends and family of the girls, remembering them as more than tragic victims.

DIRECTOR: Spike Lee. 1997. 102 min. USA. Color. English. 35mm. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.

All film screenings in the Director’s Inspiration: Spike Lee series are available here.  

Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation.