Carolyn McKinstry has served for ten years as President of the Board of Directors of the Sixteenth Street Foundation, Inc. whose mission is the ongoing maintenance of the historic Sixteenth Street Baptist Church facility. In 2004, Carolyn along with Co- Chair Neal Berte – retired President and Chancellor of Birmingham Southern College, successfully launched and completed a $3.8 million stabilization campaign. Professionally she served as the SR Program Manager for the Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative (SRBWI), a Ford and Casey funded initiative. The SRBWI initiative spanned the boundaries of three states: the black belt in Alabama, Southwest Georgia and the Mississippi Delta. The mission of the initiative still is the attainment of economic and social justice (utilizing a Human Rights framework) for rural women through individual and collective empowerment and capacity building, public policy and advocacy training and educational development and technical assistance.
Carolyn is a native of Birmingham, Alabama. She was educated in the public schools of Birmingham. She is a graduate of Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, has done graduate studies at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, and received a Master of Divinity Degree from Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School. She has held management positions with Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company, Andersen Consulting and is a retiree of BellSouth Telecommunications.
Her passion is Community service. She has served as Second Vice President and Program Committee Chair for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute for the last six years. In addition to numerous other volunteer activities and organizations, she has served as the sole female Chair of the Board of Trustees for Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, past President of the Hospice Foundation of Jefferson County, and past Vice President and Director of Programs for The Academy of Fine Arts, Inc. She also serves on the Boards of The Birmingham Pledge Foundation, Alabama Poverty Project, March of Dimes Foundation, Greater Birmingham Ministries, and is an alumni of Leadership Birmingham and Leadership Alabama. She served on the Scholarship Committee for the “Four Girls” administered by the Birmingham News. She spends much of her time talking with young people about her experiences of the sixties, making them relevant to today’s environment.
A life long member of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, Carolyn was present on September 15, 1963, when white racists bombed the Church. Carolyn’s four young friends were killed. As a teenager, Carolyn felt her “calling” by attending the mass meetings and rallies at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. She was among thousands of students hosed by firemen during the 1963 marches. She survived a second bomb explosion that destroyed a large portion of her home in 1964. An “authentic child of the movement”, Carolyn believes that God spared her life on September 15th, 1963, so that she could continue to live in service to others.
Carolyn has shared her experiences with the History and Discovery Channels, The Faith & Politics Institute and The U.S. States Memorial Holocaust Museum – both of Washington, D.C., The Frist Center of Nashville, Tennessee, CNN, BBC, MSNBC, Life Magazine, The Oprah Winfrey Show, national and local Public Radio and numerous other organizations and academic institutions. Recent invitations include New Delhi (India), Rome (Italy) (The Italian Baptist Evangelical Union in celebration of their annual international Martin Luther King memorial holiday), The Ramaz School (Jewish) in New York, The Children’s Defense Fund at Haley Farm (Clinton, Tennessee), and the Aspen Institute in Colorado. Carolyn was also a consultant and participant in the Spike Lee HBO Documentary “Four Little Girls”, the Hallmark television movie “Sins of the Father” (as told by the son of Bob Cherry, one of those convicted of the bombing), and “We shall not be moved” – a documentary of selected Churches that opened their doors to the Civil Rights Movement in the sixties, and the HBO Grammy winning “Children’s March.” Carolyn was also a subpoenaed witness in the 2002 trial year of Bob Cherry, who was one of three men subsequently convicted of the 1963 church bombing.
Carolyn has recently authored a book (memoir) entitled “While The World Watched” that will be available through Tyndale Publishers in February 2011. The book details her life growing up in Birmingham, as well as “lessons learned” from her experiences and involvement in the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement of the sixties. The book also serves as a tool for Carolyn’s ongoing international and national travel and work in the Ministry of Reconciliation and Forgiveness.