16th Street Baptist Church Bombing Survivors Recall a Day That Changed the Fight for Civil Rights

The decades that have passed since the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., was bombed 55 years ago Saturday — on Sept. 15, 1963 — have not made the memory of that day any easier.

"I will never stop crying thinking about it," Barbara Cross, now 68, told TIME in an emotional phone conversation.