It is a sound that I will never forget, that will forever reverberate in my ears. After Baxley requested access to the original FBI files on the case, he learned that evidence accumulated by the FBI against the named suspects between 1963 and 1965 had not been revealed to the local prosecutors in Birmingham. [29] The explosion was so intense that one of the girls' bodies was decapitated and so badly mutilated that her body could be identified only through her clothing and a ring. Precisely because of its reputation as a stronghold for white supremacy, civil rights activists made Birmingham a major focus of their efforts to desegregate the Deep South. [113] Blanton was confined in a one-man cell under tight security. BIRMINGHAM, Ala. Maxine McNair, the last living parent of any of the four Black girls killed in a 1963 Alabama church bombing, died Sunday. Martin said: "The cold-blooded callousness of this hate crime has not diminished by the passage of time." (The first three schools in Birmingham to be integrated would do so on September 4. Baxley acknowledged that typical juries in 1960s Alabama would have likely leaned in favor of both defendants, even if these recordings had been presented as evidence,[126] but said that he could have prosecuted Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry in 1977 if he had been granted access to these tapes. Although Baxley knew he had insufficient evidence to charge Blanton at this stage, he intended the subpoena to frighten Blanton into confessing his involvement and negotiating a plea deal to turn state evidence against his co-conspirators. The crime was calculated, not random. Today marks the 50th anniversary of the white supremacist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four young girls. [86] He was sentenced to life imprisonment for her murder. Even though the legal system was slow to provide justice, the effect of the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church was immediate and significant. [17] Other acts of violence followed the settlement, and several staunch Klansmen were known to have expressed frustration at what they saw as a lack of effective resistance to integration.[18]. The intention was to fill the jail with protesters. [91] In the years since his incarceration, Chambliss had been confined to a solitary cell to protect him from attacks by fellow inmates. Relatives of the slain girls, prosecutor Doug Jones, Alabama Chief Deputy Attorney General Alice Martin, and Jefferson County district attorney Brandon Falls each spoke at the hearing to oppose Blanton's parole. Updated [36] She had 21 pieces of glass embedded in her face and was blinded in one eye. Many of the civil rights protest marches that took place in Birmingham during the 1960s began at the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church, which had long been a significant religious center for the citys Black population and a routine meeting place for civil rights organizers like King. Birmingham became the center of the civil rights movement in spring 1963, when Martin Luther King Jr. and his supporters in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference arrived with a plan they called Project Cfor confrontation. Cantrell also stated that Chambliss had boasted of his knowledge of how to construct a "drip-method bomb" using a fishing float and a leaking bucket of water. Reverend Cobbs stated that her uncle had repeatedly informed her he had been engaged in what he referred to as a "one-man battle" against blacks since the 1940s. Hanes noted conflicting testimony among several of the 12 witnesses called by the defense to testify as to Chambliss's whereabouts on the day of the bombing. Rudolph, known as the "Fifth Little Girl" for surviving the. Robinson died before reaching the hospital. The church was used as a meeting-place for civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and Fred Shuttlesworth, for organizing and educating marchers. 4:37 PM EDT, Wed September 25, 2013, A grieving relative is led away from the site of the. 2023 Cable News Network. [59] These witness statements specifically indicated that a white man had exited the car and walked toward the steps of the church. On September 15, 1963, in Birmingham, a bomb exploded on 16th street Baptist Church at 10:22 A.M. During a Sunday school session the ground floor of the church collapsed, four girls out of nearly 200 people died, some. [124], Following the convictions of Blanton and Cherry, Alabama's former Attorney General, William Baxley, expressed his frustration that he had never been informed of the existence of the FBI audio recordings before they were introduced in the 2001 and 2002 trials. [1] [2] [3] Four members of a local Ku Klux Klan chapter planted 19 sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device beneath the steps located on the east side of the church. [48]:272, The service for Carole Rosamond Robertson was held at St. John's African Methodist Episcopal Church. ", "Today in 1963: The Bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church", "Justice Story: Birmingham church bombing kills 4 innocent girls in racially motivated attack", "Former Klansmen indicted for murder in 1963 bombing of Birmingham, Alabama church", "16th Street Baptist Church Bombing (1963) (U.S. National Park Service)", "Letter From Birmingham City Jail (Excerpts)", "Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor (1897-1973) (U.S. National Park Service)", "Birmingham Confrontation Reconsidered: An Analysis of the Dynamics and Tactics of Mobilization", "Ghosts of Alabama: The Prosecution of Bobby Frank Cherry for the Bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church", "Memories of An Imperial City: Race, Gender, and Birmingham, Alabama", "Six Negro Children Killed in Alabama Sunday", "Former Klansman Is Guilty Of Bomb Deaths", "16th Street Baptist Church Bombing Survivors Recall a Day That Changed the Fight for Civil Rights: 'I Will Never Stop Crying Thinking About It', "Killer of Four in 1963 Blast Dies in Prison", "John Cross Jr. Pastor at Bombed Church, Dies at 82", "The Birmingham Church Bombing: Bombingham", "Remembering the Birmingham Church Bombing", "John Cross Jr., Pastor at Bombed Church, Dies at 82", "Awarding Congressional Gold Medal to Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley", "From the archive, 16 September 1963: Black church bombed in Birmingham, Alabama", "Father Recalls Deadly Blast At Ala. Baptist Church", "1963 Birmingham Church Bombing Fast Facts", "New Memorial for 16th St. Baptist Church on Sun, 56 Years After Bombing", "16th Street Baptist Church Bombing: Forty Years Later, Birmingham Still Struggles with Violent Past", "40 years for Justice: Did the FBI Cover for the Birmingham Bombers? [11], Black and white residents of Birmingham had access to different public amenities such as water fountains and places of public gathering such as movie theaters. The Reverend Cross is interred at Hillandale Memorial Gardens in, Welsh craftsman and artist John Petts was inspired to construct and deliver the iconic stained-glass, The names of the four girls killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing are engraved upon the. Three young men were shot and killed, and read more, Toward the end of April 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and fellow leaders in the civil rights movement faced a grim reality in Birmingham, Alabama. Upon learning of the bombing at the Church, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. sent a telegram to Alabama Governor George Wallace, a staunch and vocal segregationist, stating bluntly: 'The blood of our little children is on your hands." The brutal attack and the deaths of the four little girls . "I will never stop crying thinking about it," said Cross, 68, who was 13 at the time. Aftermath of the Birmingham Church Bombing, Lasting Impact of the Birmingham Church Bombing, information concerning the identity of the bombers. [25] According to one survivor, the explosion shook the entire building and propelled the girls' bodies through the air "like rag dolls". Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. [44] When he spotted Ware and his brother, Sims fired twice, reportedly with his eyes closed. Brogdon testified on May 16 that Cherry had boasted to her that he had been the individual who planted the bomb beneath the steps to the church, then returned hours later to light the fuse to the dynamite. - Riots break out, and two African-American boys, Virgil. [94] They unsealed 9,000 pieces of evidence previously gathered by the FBI in the 1960s (many of these documents relating to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing had not been made available to DA William Baxley in the 1970s). A fourth suspect, Herman Frank Cash, died in 1994 before he could be brought to trial. Although the FBI had concluded in 1965 that the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing had been committed by four known Klansmen and segregationists: Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., Herman Frank Cash, Robert Edward Chambliss, and Bobby Frank Cherry,[6] no prosecutions were conducted until 1977, when Robert Chambliss was tried and convicted of the first-degree murder of one of the victims, 11-year-old Carol Denise McNair. August 3, 2016 - Blanton, the last living convicted bomber, is denied parole. [30] Another victim was killed by a piece of mortar embedded in her skull. The deaths in a sense, are on the hands of each of us. Outrage over the incident and the violent clash between protesters and police that followed helped draw national attention to the hard-fought, often-dangerous struggle for civil rights for African Americans. [21] The anonymous caller simply said the words, "Three minutes"[22]:10 to Maull before terminating the call. Family and friends of Carole Robertson attend graveside services for her in Birmingham on September 17, 1963. While in jail, King wrote a letter to local white ministers justifying his decision not to call off the demonstrations in the face of continued bloodshed at the hands of local law enforcement officials. According to Vann's later testimony, Chambliss was standing "looking down toward the church, like a firebug watching his fire". 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