Today marks a very solemn day in our history — it is the 60th anniversary of the tragic bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.

Today, we honor the lives lost of four young girls: Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins.

The loss changed America forever: bringing to clarity our nation’s history of racially motivated violence and galvanizing the civil right movement — in the following years, Congress passed both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Today is also a reminder that every battle and every gain in civil rights has come at a high cost.

We will never recover lives lost, but we can make sure their sacrifice was not in vain.

Without the influence of these four little girls, I would not get to walk the halls of Congress as Alabama’s first Black, female member of Congress.

That’s why, in 2013, I passed legislation to posthumously award these four girls the congressional gold medal — the highest civilian honor we can give — to ensure their lives are never forgotten.

And the work is far from over — as extremists plot and plan to rewrite and whitewash our racist history, we must double down on our fight to ensure we protect our most basic freedoms — including the right to vote.

Because the color of our skin does not determine the value of our life.

— Terri