Carolyn Maull was born in Clanton, Alabama, in 1948, “halfway in and halfway out of the South’s violent Civil Rights era” (35). She was the third Maull child and the family’s first “girl-child.” In those years, Birmingham was highly segregated, and racial violence proliferated. McKinstry was deeply and directly affected by many key events in the civil rights movement, including marching with Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1963 Children’s Crusade and surviving the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. For years, the trauma of these events haunted McKinstry; however, through the strength of her faith, she managed to forgive those who wronged her and dedicated her life to “reach[ing] out and touch[ing] those in need of healing” (276). From age two, McKinstry was enrolled in Sunday school classes at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and began taking on more church responsibilities as she got older. Worried about the safety of his young Black daughter, her father insisted that her brothers escort her anytime she left the house. However, at church, McKinstry was considered safe. She was allowed to exercise responsibility as a church secretary, and she felt independent and grown up.

On September 15, 1963, when McKinstry was 14 years old, the

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