Martin Luther King described Birmingham, AL in 1963 as probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. It was nicknamed Bombingham because of the large number of bombings including when members of the Ku Klux Klan blew up the Black 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963 in a terrorist attack killing four girls and injuring 22 others. The bombing marked a turning point in the Civil Rights movement and contributed to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Birmingham Public Library (now a Research Library) quietly desegregatedduring the violent summer of 1963, functioning as a lone calming force to help with racial reconciliation. While other public accommodations such as public schools remained segregated, the successful integration of public libraries resulted in libraries being some of the first Southern civic institutions to desegregate.