Birmingham native Lisa McNair is the younger sister of Denise McNair, one of the four little girls killed in 1963 in the infamous bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

After attending public and private schools, Lisa attended college at the University of Alabama, both Tuscaloosa and Birmingham campuses. She worked for 18 years at the Greater Birmingham Convention & Visitors Bureau promoting tourism and was instrumental in assisting with the development of Civil Right Historic Tours in the Greater Birmingham area. Later she spent seven years working full-time in her family’s business, Chris McNair Studios & Art Gallery, and now serves as a professional photographer with her business, Posh Photographers. Lisa worked for 15 years at Hand in Paw, a local nonprofit that provides Animal Assisted Therapy. She blossomed during this time because it allowed her to express her love of serving people and animals.

Currently, she is a national public speaker under her own business, Speak Lisa. Lisa shares the story of Denise’s life, her heinous murder, and how it affected her family and the city of Birmingham. As part of that work, she also conducts Anti-Racism workshops where she speaks on racial unity and how we must all remember that as human beings, we have more things in common than we have that are different.

Lisa serves on several boards, including the Morgan Project, UAB’s Community and Scientific Action Board (CSAB), Four Little Girls Memorial Fund, and Faith in Action Alabama.

On September 13th of this year, Lisa became a published author with her book, Dear Denise: Letters to the Sister I Never Knew, published by UA Press. In this memoir, she opens up and shares, very honestly, her life story in letters she’s written to her late sister Denise.

Lisa hopes that the lessons learned from the heinous murder of her sister and others in the Civil Rights Movement will never be forgotten but will remain present to help us remember never to repeat the horrible evilness of that time.

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