America’s chart-topping pop in 1963 was utterly silent about racial violence

Evidence

The week in September 1963 that Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Denise McNair perished in the bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the fourth-biggest song in America concerned a euphoria those four little girls were robbed of ever experiencing. “Heat Wave,” by Martha and the Vandellas, was a massive hit. Boy loves girl, girl has nervous breakdown: “Has high blood pressure got a hold on me?” Martha sings. “Or is this the way love’s supposed to be?” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1076

Categorization

• CANDY: The juxtaposition — four girls bombed to death while ‘Heat Wave’ topped charts — is a punchy, tweetable irony.