#YesAllWomen: Feminism has its 'Birmingham moment'

One of the most positive and uplifting characteristics of humans is our ability to take an unspeakable tragedy and not wallow in the despair that it creates, but channel that anger and sadness into something positive that benefits all of us, going forward.

For example, it happened in America in 1963. For years, the moral arc of the struggle for civil rights across the Deep South was bending toward justice...in slow motion. Anger over the Emmett Till case, the resilience of Dr. Martin Luther King and the Montgomery bus boycott, the courage of the Freedom Riders and marchers who faced fire hoses in Birmingham did put government-sanctioned racism on the front burner, and there were some impressive wins. But America -- especially on the federal level -- was still falling woefully short in ending segregation and other forms of  sanctioned discrimination.

On September 15, 1963, in Birmingham, Ala., four monsters associated with the racist Ku Klux Klan placed a dynamite bomb against the 16th Street Baptist Church -- a staging area for civil rights protests. Four adolescent girls -- Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley -- were murdered in the bomb blast. The shock of losing four innocent young girls to adult hatred caused many Americans to see the civil rights struggle in a new light, to truly focus on the broader injustice perpetrated against citizens because of the color of their skin. Within two years, Congress moved swiftly to pass both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, ending an ugly chapter in our history.