While the World Watched is a memoir in which Carolyn Maull McKinstry draws on her personal experience growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, during the turmoil of the civil rights movement. McKinstry was born in Clanton, Alabama, in 1948 and spent her entire childhood and adolescence in Birmingham. From an early age, McKinstry was deeply involved in her church, Sixteenth Street Baptist. When the church was targeted by the Ku Klux Klan, who killed four friends of McKinstry in a bombing. McKinstry was deeply traumatized by the loss of her friends and the experience of surviving the bombing. For many years, she suffered from depression and developed a substance use disorder with alcohol. However, McKinstry also felt that God spared her from the bombing because he had a special plan for her.

After years of struggling with depression and substance use disorder, McKinstry realized that hatred and bitterness were causing her to “self-destruct,” and she prayed to God for the strength to give up drinking and forgive the men who bombed the church. She received a Master of Divinity degree from Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School and dedicated herself to serving others.