Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Last week, we commemorated the individuals who were killed by terrorists on September 11, 2001—a terrible day in the history of our country. Today, I’d like to look back at an infamous day in our country’s history when four young Black girls were killed by terrorists—terrorists who were their own countrymen.
Klan Bombing of Birmingham Church 1963
From The History Channel:
Even as the inspiring words of Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech rang out from the Lincoln Memorial during the historic March on Washington in August of 1963, racial relations in the segregated South were marked by continued violence and inequality. On September 15, a bomb exploded before Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama–a church with a predominantly black congregation that served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders. Four young girls were killed and many other people injured; 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.
By 1965, the FBI had four serious suspects who they thought might be responsible for the church bombing—Robert E. Chambliss, Bobby Frank Cherry, Herman Frank Cash, and Thomas E. Blanton, Jr. All four were members of the Ku Klux Klan. According to the FBI, witnesses were reluctant to talk and physical evidence was lacking. The FBI has said that information from their surveillances was not admissible in court at that time. No federal charges were filed against the suspected bombers in the ‘60s.
In the end, justice was served. Chambliss received life in prison in 1977 following a case led by Alabama Attorney General Robert Baxley. And eventually the fear, prejudice, and reticence that kept witnesses from coming forward began to subside. We re-opened our case in the mid-1990s, and Blanton and Cherry were indicted in May 2000. Both were convicted at trial and sentenced to life in prison. The fourth man, Herman Frank Cash, had died in 1994. (A Byte Out of History: The ’63 Baptist Church Bombing)
Excerpt from Carole Boston Weatherford’s award-winning book-length poem for children titled Birmingham, 1963:
The day I turned ten
Our church was quiet. No meetings, no marches.
Mama left me in Sunday school
With a soft kiss and coins for the offering plate.
The teacher read a psalm, told a Bible story,
And led a favorite hymn—
“Jesus Loves the Little Children.”
I could hardly wait for church service to begin—
To stand in the pulpit and sing from my heart.
I wiped my clammy palms and took a deep breath.
As I waited, four big girls giggled on their way
To the restroom. I would have tagged along
If I thought they’d include me.
The day I turned ten
Someone tucked a bundle of dynamite
Under the church steps, then lit the fuse of hate.
Joan Baez – Birmingham Sunday
Survivor: Church bombing ‘is very clear in my mind’
Let us remember the four young girls who were killed when the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed on September 15, 1963:
Addie Mae Collins, 14
Carole Roberston, 14
Cynthia Wesley, 14
Denise McNair, 11
An excerpt from Sam Cornish’s poem Birmingham 1963:
They were just
four
little girls
in a church
not old
enough
to know
the Lord
forgave them
for being
born
You can read the rest of the poem here.
**********
FURTHER READING
Condoleezza Rice Recalls Birmingham Bombing That Killed Childhood Friend (Huffington Post)
Congress honors 16th Street Baptist Church bombing victims (CBS42/AP)
The Birmingham Church Bombing
The 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, which killed four young girls, shocked the city of Birmingham and the world.
BY GREG BARBER
4/18/2002
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/media/jan-june02/birmingham_04-18.html
Excerpt:
Investigating The Case
Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley reopened the investigation in 1971, but said it took him half a decade to bring charges against suspect Robert Chambliss because the FBI refused to cooperate for years.
Author Diane McWhorter wrote in USA Today in 2000 that in prosecuting the 73-year-old Chambliss, Baxley ran into “some let-sleeping-dogs-lie sentiment against going after ‘an old man.'”
The watershed moment in the Chambliss trial came on Nov. 15, 1977, when Chambliss’ niece Elizabeth Cobbs testified that her uncle had made comments to her that suggested his involvement in the bombing.
Chambliss was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. He maintained his innocence until he died in 1985.
After the Chambliss conviction and Baxley left office, the church bombing case again fell dormant. Two attempts to reopen the case, in 1980 and 1988, did not result in any convictions.
The FBI reopened its investigation in 1996, telling reporters it had received new evidence, although they would not discuss what the new information included.
Investigators eventually focused on two of the other three men mentioned in the 1965 FBI report, Thomas Blanton Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry.
Herman Frank Cash, the fourth man mentioned in the FBI’s 1965 report, died in 1994. He was never charged in the case.
Cherry had long denied any involvement in the bombing, saying he was at home watching wrestling on television when the bomb was allegedly planted. But in 1999, reporter Jerry Mitchell of the Jackson, Miss. Clarion-Ledger newspaper debunked Cherry’s alibi, citing newspaper television listings that indicated no wrestling program was on television that night in Jackson.
Asked about this apparent contradiction, Cherry stuck to his story, Mitchell told the NewsHour.
Both Cherry and Blanton denied involvement in the bombing, but surrendered to police in 2000 when prosecutors issued charges that included four counts of intentional murder for each of the girls killed.
Lawyers for the two men tried to have the trial moved from Birmingham, citing a poll that said 42 percent of local residents thought Blanton and Cherry were guilty or probably guilty, The New York Times reported. A state judge rejected the request.
Both men were scheduled to be tried in April 2001, but just days before the trial was set to begin, Circuit Court Judge James Garrett indefinitely postponed proceedings against Cherry.
The decision came after defense attorneys argued the 71-year-old Cherry was too physically and mentally infirm to stand trial. Garrett granted their request but refused to throw out charges against Cherry.
Felix,
White racists in the Ku Klux Klan also killed WHITE civil rights workers.
Rest in peace Addie Mae, Carole, Cynthia, and Denise. May we never forget.
Thank you, Elaine.
Felix, you reference a single disturbed individual acting publicly, in contrast to a pack of “grown men” acting with forethought. Straw dogs don’t run (aka that dog don’t hunt).
Felix,
If you want to be crass about it, add up all of the blacks that were killed by their slave owners and during the Jim Crow era and compare it to your numbers. You will lose that comparison by a very large number. That bleeding heart of yours should be bleeding equally for any person who is attacked and murdered by any other person or persons, no matter what their race is.
This high school in Jacksonville is still named after KKK founder:
(Kos).
Felix,
My heart does bleed for all people who are killed by racists–including the innocent young girls who were killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church–and Emmett Till. Just fourteen years old, Till was beaten beyond recognition in 1955 for the crime of allegedly whistling at a white woman.
The Emmett Till Murder
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU1wuqyOP98
1955 The Murder of Emmett Till
where are you bleeding hearts when blacks kill or maim white in racist attacks? You do realize that the vast majority of race crime is actually black on white right? Of course not because most of you are ignorant as hell. But yeah thats right call ME the racist. Whatever. Idiots. Get a clue.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57602060-504083/jeffrey-babbitt-update-nyc-man-dies-after-random-possibly-racially-motivated-attack/
Jeffrey Babbitt slipped into a coma and had been declared brain dead at Bellevue Hospital after he was allegedly beat by 31-year-old Lashawn Marten last week.
Babbitt, a retired train conductor, was reportedly walking in Union Square around 3 p.m. Wednesday when Marten allegedly shouted a racial comment and began attacking people.
“He said ‘the next white person who walks by I’m going to [expletive],'” one female witness told CBS New York. “His fist went in and the man’s head bobbed and he hit the ground and you could hear his skull hitting the ground.”
Thanks Elaine.
“Lest we forget.”
Great job Elaine….
Thank you or the historical perspective…..
OS,
Thank you for the additional information…..
You’re both treasures and a vast wealth of information….
Thank you Elaine,
Too often we see comments on this blog from those who would pretend that many chapters in America’s racism did not exist, or that remembering them is unproductive. The connection you’ve drawn between this country’s racism and the terrorism we so decry today is apt. Racism has always been intertwined with terrorist acts and brutalization of the innocent. Racist terrorism has always been abetted by people in politics afraid to speak up to decry it.
http://thegrio.com/2013/09/13/virgil-ware-and-johnny-robinson-2-black-youths-killed-in-1963-often-overshadowed-but-not-forgotten/#.UjWMh46Cpns.twitter Good article, Elaine.
1963 Birmingham church bombing timeline
By CNN Staff and CNN Library
Fri September 13, 2013
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/13/us/birmingham-bombing-timeline/index.html
Excerpt:
(CNN) — September 15, 1963 — A dynamite bomb explodes at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing 11-year-old Carol Denise McNair and 14-year-olds Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins and Carole Robertson.
1965 — Birmingham FBI agents recommend that at least four suspects be charged with the bombing. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover blocks the prosecution of the suspects, saying the chance of winning a conviction was “remote.”
1968 — Federal authorities pull out of the investigation without charges being filed.
1971 — Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley reopens the case.
September 26, 1977 — Robert Chambliss, 73, a retired auto mechanic and former Ku Klux Klan member, is indicted by a Jefferson County grand jury on four counts of first-degree murder.
November 18, 1977– Chambliss is convicted of first-degree murder in connection with Carol’s death and sentenced to life imprisonment.
1980 — Jefferson County’s district attorney reopens the case after a U.S. Justice Department report found that Hoover had blocked evidence that prosecutors could have used. No additional charges are filed.
October 29, 1985 — Chambliss dies of natural causes at age 81 without ever publicly admitting any role in the bombing.
October, 1988 — Federal and state prosecutors reopen their investigation into the church bombing after Gary A. Tucker, a former bus driver dying of cancer, said he helped set the bomb. No new charges are filed.
July 10, 1997 — The FBI reopens its investigation into the bombing after a secret yearlong review.
May 4, 2000 — A lawyer for longtime bombing suspect Bobby Frank Cherry says his client rejected a deal in which he would receive probation if he pleaded guilty to transporting explosives over state lines. Cherry, in jail in Texas on charges of raping his stepdaughter in 1971, continues to deny any involvement in the bombing.
President Kennedy was still alive when the bombing was performed by the terrorists. The lame federal response is due to him. Blame it on J. Edgar Hoover too. Kennedy had a few more months to live. Now he has foundations set up for him and brother Bobby. History is lame because of the foundations and the Yale and Harvard historians. The media is lame and all about John and Bobby. When Johnson came in he passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He had to break some arms to get this passed. He is the best President of that entire century.
Justice so delayed, is a very poor excuse for justice at best.
Elaine,
Great article!
OS,
Great info, and What Rafflaw said!
Terrible day in our history. But something everyone should know and remember to illustrate what we need to strive to avoid repeating. Thanks for the article Elaine
OS,
You are correct that Mr. Stoner is not missed by anyone who believes in freedom and the rule of law.
Great job Elaine. We can never forget the hate that killed those 4 innocent young girls. The quote from Gov. George Wallace in the lead in to the Baez song was very telling. The Joan Baez song has a haunting sound to it. I think OS might agree that her song would be made better by adding pipes.
When Bill Baxley was elected Attorney General of Alabama, he asked for the FBI files on the case. That was when it came to light there were critical files that could have convicted the bombers early on, but those were kept from the prosecution on direct orders of that old closet queen, J. Edgar Hoover. Baxley reopened the case with the newly discovered evidence and got his convictions of the surviving church bombers.
J. B. Stoner was another church bomber that almost got away. I first met J. B. Stoner in Atlanta in 1971. Easily one of the most offensive men I have ever had the misfortune to interact with. He was one of the suspects in the 16th Street church bombing. They finally pinned the 1958 bombing of the Bethel Baptist Church on him. The church was vacant, so there were no injuries in that bombing, but in 1980 he was convicted. He was released from prison in 1986. He died at the age of 81 in a nursing home following a stroke. He is not missed.