John Cross, Jr.

Who was John Cross, Jr.?

John H. Cross, Jr. 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.