While The World Watched by Carolyn Maull McKinstry

I read this book just a week after seeing the film "Selma". The movie begins with the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, a bombing that killed four young girls, all of whom were friends of the author of this book. 

Carolyn relates her life story up to the day and hour of the bombing, concentrating on the discriminatory practices. I recall particularly Carolyn's grandmother, who spent the last two weeks of her life in a segregated hospital, in the basement of the hospital with dripping pipes, little food, and only cursory examinations by a doctor once in a while. 

Then there s her telling about the terrible treatment the blacks received at the hands of Bull Connor and the Birmingham police. Carolyn suffered for many, many years after the bombing that killed her friends. She was in the church that day and had just left her friends in the restroom when the bombing killed them.