In August 1963, attorney Arthur Shores was handling civil rights cases across Alabama and the South and advancing the African American struggle against unfair segregation through the courts, making him a target of threats and violence from angry White militants. Although he carried a pistol for protection, he taught his daughters not to be violent, to pray for their safety, and to forgive those who tormented them. For protection, the girls were often driven to school, the family frequently changed its home phone number to avoid threatening calls, and Black neighborhood patrols regularly guarded the Shores home while Shores worked on high-profile cases. Though Theodora Shores often urged the family to move to Michigan, Arthur Shores insisted on staying in Birmingham and Alabama to help “his people.” On the night of August 20, 1963, one day after a federal judge ordered the school board to admit its first Black students to three all-White schools, a bomb damaged the Shores home and left a four-foot-wide crater in the yard, though no one was injured. On September 4, a second bomb injured Mrs. Shores and killed one of the family dogs, and on September 15, a powerful blast at 16th Street Baptist Church killed four girls, including Cynthia Wesley of Dynamite Hill.