Half a century ago in the deeply Southern city of Birmingham, a racially motivated attack on a black church left four young girls dead and helped galvanize a civil rights movement that changed voting laws across the United States.
For those with ties to that deadly event in Alabama, Wednesday's shootings in a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, another deeply Southern city, echoed the tragedy and compounded the frustration that more progress has not been made.
"Now these people in South Carolina are going through what my parents went through," said Lisa McNair, 50, the niece of one of the girls who died in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.