Photographer Chris McNair
American, born 1926.
In the early 60s, Jewell Christopher (Chris) McNair was both a professional photographer and the father of one of the four young girls killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. His touching photographs of his daughter illustrated a compelling repudiation of racial violence and hate published in LOOK in their March 24, 1964, edition.
McNair was born in the tiny town of Fordyce, Arkansas. He met his future wife Maxine Pippen when both were attending college at the Tuskeegee Institute in 1945. Chris served in the Army in the waining days of World War II, and both graduated in 1949. They married the following year, got pregnant and moved closer to her mother's home in Birmingham. Their oldest daughter Carol Denise was born in 1951. She attended Center Street Elementary School where her mother taught. One of her early playmates was Condoleezza Rice, the daughter of a local pastor and a gifted pianist. Rice would later become Secretary of State during Pres. George W. Bush's administration.
Chris McNair had been a milkman early in Denise's life, but he opened a photography studio in 1962. He produced portraits and photos of local events for both black and white customers. He also photographed civil rights demonstrations and events throughout Alabama. One of his favorite subjects was his daughter Denise.
On Sunday, September 15, 1963, Chris was attending his Lutheran church a few miles away from the Sixteenth Street Baptist that his wife and daughter attended. Denise joined three other friends – Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins, and Cynthia Wesley – in the basement ladies room. At 10:22 a.m. a timer set off at least 15 sticks of dynamite, killing all four young girls. Denise's mother was upstairs and frantically began searching for her daughter. Her father soon started for the Baptist Church, but someone told him to go to the hospital. It was there the couple discovered their first daughter was dead. Later that day, 16-year-old Johnnie Robinson was reportedly throwing rocks when he was shot in the back by a city police officer. Virgil Ware, 13, was riding on the handlebars of his older brother's bike when he was shot and killed by a white teenager. The white teen was sentenced to six months in juvenile detention for the murder.
Chis McNair returned to the church and even shot a few photographs before grief overwhelmed him.
A year after Denise was killed, the couple had their second daughter, Lisa; and four years later, Kim was born. Chris McNair was elected to the state legislature in 1974, one of the first black lawmakers since Reconstruction. In 1986, he was elected to the Johnson County Commission and served until 2001. During his time in office, the federal investigation into the 1963 bombing was reopened, and two members of the Ku Klux Klan were convicted of the murders. Two others who had passed away were named a co-conspirators.
In the last years of McNair's commissioner term, he was ensnared in a troubled sewer construction project. He was convicted in 2006 for accepting $140,000 in bribes in a scandal that involved 20 other local officials. McNair started serving his sentence in a federal medical prision in 2011. He was released in August 2013 at the age of 87 under a new program of compassionate release of convicts suffering from medical ills. He returned home to Birmingham in time to participate in the September commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the church bombing. He has a history of strokes, prostate cancer, diabetes, hypertension and depression. His doctor says his depression is a result of the bombing.
His daughters are now looking for repository for his photographic archive.
