The current state death penalty law applied only to crimes committed after its passage. Within days of the bombing, investigators began to focus their attention upon a KKK splinter group known as the "Cahaba Boys". [62], The FBI encountered difficulties in their initial investigation into the bombing. On November 14, 1977, Robert Chambliss, then aged 73, stood trial in Birmingham's Jefferson County Courthouse. It's never too late for a man to be held accountable for his crimes." [97]:162, The state prosecution had originally intended to try both defendants together; however, the trial of Bobby Cherry was delayed due to the findings of a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation. Following the opening statements, the prosecution began presenting witnesses. A coffin is loaded into a hearse at a funeral for the girls. "[102], In addition to calling attention to flaws in the prosecution's case, the defense exposed inconsistencies in the memories of some prosecution witnesses who had testified. Within one week of being sworn into office, Baxley had researched original police files into the bombing, discovering that the original police documents were "mostly worthless". 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. KKK members had routinely called in bomb threats intended to disrupt civil rights meetings as well as services at the church. "[66], Bobby Frank Cherry died of cancer on November 18, 2004, at age 74, while incarcerated at the Kilby Correctional Facility. [8], In the years leading up to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, Birmingham had earned a national reputation as a tense, violent and racially segregated city, in which even tentative racial integration in any form was met with violent resistance. [111][112] He was incarcerated at the St. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville, Alabama. [44][46]), Some civil rights activists blamed George Wallace, Governor of Alabama and an outspoken segregationist, for creating the climate that had led to the killings. The bombings targeted African-American leaders of the Birmingham campaign. The Cahaba Boys had formed earlier in 1963, as they felt that the KKK was becoming restrained and impotent in response to concessions granted to black people to end racial segregation. Burns had secretly recorded several conversations with Blanton in which the latter (Blanton) had gloated when talking about the bombing, and had boasted the police would not catch him when he bombed another church. [21] The anonymous caller simply said the words, "Three minutes"[22]:10 to Maull before terminating the call. [22]:57 Although the Cahaba Boys had fewer than 30 active members,[58] among them were Thomas Blanton Jr., Herman Cash, Robert Chambliss, and Bobby Cherry. July 1997 - The case is reopened by the FBI, citing new evidence. It was September 15,1963 11:00 AM at The 16th Street Baptist Church (United States National Park Service). Shortly thereafter, she had heard "the most horrible noise", before being struck on the head by debris. Although this donation was accepted,[48]:274 Martin Luther King Jr. is known to have sent Wallace a telegram saying, "the blood of four little children is on your hands. The Birmingham church bombing occurred on September 15, 1963, when a bomb exploded before Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabamaa church with a predominantly Black congregation that also served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders. (The plastic remnants were later lost by investigators. [11] The work these Civil Rights activists were engaged in within Birmingham was crucial to the movement as the Birmingham campaign was seen as guidance for other cities in the South with regards to rising against segregation and racism. [96] The following day, both men surrendered to police. In spite of the darkness of this hour, we must not become bitter We must not lose faith in our white brothers. Blanton, however, hired a lawyer and refused to answer any questions. Just before this the church had 292 Words 2 Pages Satisfactory Essays Read More. 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. appreciated. Family and friends of Carole Robertson attend graveside services for her in Birmingham on September 17, 1963. [11], The three-story 16th Street Baptist Church was a rallying point for civil rights activities through the spring of 1963. Cochran also added that although the evidence to be presented would not conclusively show that Cherry had personally planted or ignited the bomb, the combined evidence would illustrate that he had aided and abetted in the commission of the act. [90], Robert Chambliss died in the Lloyd Noland Hospital and Health Center on October 29, 1985, at the age of 81. A key point contested as to the validity of the audiotapes being introduced into evidence, outside the hearing of the jury, was the fact that Cherry had no grounds to contest the introduction of the tapes into evidence, as, under the Fourth Amendment, neither his home or property had been subject to discreet recording by the FBI. Continuing to maintain his innocence, Chambliss died in prison in 1985. Bombings at black homes[13] and institutions were a regular occurrence, with at least 21 separate explosions recorded at black properties and churches in the eight years before 1963. Although Cash is known to have passed a polygraph test in which he was questioned as to his potential involvement in the bombing, The Reverend John Cross, who had been the pastor of the 16th Street Baptist Church at the time of the 1963 bombing, died of natural causes on November 15, 2007. She was 93. These instructions were relayed to the crowd present by a single youth with a bullhorn. "[24] Another witness to testify was William Jackson, who testified as to his joining the KKK in 1963 and becoming acquainted with Chambliss shortly thereafter. [75] But at a pre-trial hearing on October 18,[76] Judge Wallace Gibson ruled that the defendant would be tried upon one count of murderthat of Carol Denise McNair[76]and that the remaining three counts of murder would remain, but that he would not be charged in relation to these three deaths. He seldom spoke of his involvement in the bombing, shunned social activity and rarely received visitors. In his closing argument, prosecuting attorney and future U.S. Given the state's disenfranchisement of most black people since the turn of the century, by making voter registration essentially impossible, few of the city's black residents were registered to vote. [32] All four girls were pronounced dead on arrival at the Hillman Emergency Clinic. "[63], On May 13, 1965, local investigators and the FBI formally named Blanton, Cash, Chambliss, and Cherry as the perpetrators of the bombing, with Robert Chambliss the likely ringleader of the four. [8], On Thursday, May 2, more than 1,000 students, some reportedly as young as eight, opted to leave school and gather at the 16th Street Baptist Church. A policeman and a neighbor had each testified that Chambliss was at the home of a man named Clarence Dill on that day. At least 14 others are injured in the explosion, including Sarah Collins, the 12-year-old sister of victim Addie Mae Collins, who loses an eye. Following the bombing, the 16th Street Baptist Church remained closed for over eight months, as assessments and, later, repairs were conducted upon the property. Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. was brought to trial in Birmingham, Alabama, before Judge James Garrett on April 24, 2001. [130] These polygraph results had convinced some FBI agents of Rowe's culpability in the bombing. It was later revealed that the FBI had information concerning the identity of the bombers by 1965 and did nothing. [17], Hundreds of individuals, some of them lightly wounded, converged on the church to search the debris for survivors as police erected barricades around the church and several outraged men scuffled with police. Your effort and contribution in providing this feedback is much The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was a white supremacist terrorist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sunday, September 15, 1963. "use strict";(function(){var insertion=document.getElementById("citation-access-date");var date=new Date().toLocaleDateString(undefined,{month:"long",day:"numeric",year:"numeric"});insertion.parentElement.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(date),insertion)})(); FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. NBC Universal, Inc. Four girls were killed when a bomb exploded at an Alabama church in 1963. In his opening statement for the prosecution, Don Cochran presented his case: that the evidence would show that Cherry had participated in a conspiracy to commit the bombing and conceal evidence linking him to the crime and that he had later gloated over the deaths of the victims. The sole stained-glass window largely undamaged in the explosion depicted Christ leading a group of young children. [40] Police urged parents of black and white youths to keep their children indoors, as the Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, ordered an additional 300 state police to assist in quelling unrest. He wont be eligible for parole again until 2021. Immediately after the blast, church members. The explosion caused the church to cave in and kill four girls who had been in the bathroom in the church's basement. A Warner Bros. She is the daughter of the Reverend John Cross and was aged 13 in 1963. READ MORE: Civil Rights Movement Timeline, https://www.history.com/topics/1960s/birmingham-church-bombing. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Lives were lost and you were defined by your skin color. [8] When the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Congress on Racial Equality became involved in a campaign to register African Americans to vote in Birmingham, tensions in the city increased. Sarah Jean Collins, 12, lost an eye in the blast. Johnson urged the jury against convicting his client by association. The girls, all black members of Birmingham's 16 th Street Baptist Church, were killed in 1963 when a white supremacist planted a bomb in the church on a Sunday morning. The case was again reopened in 1980, 1988 and 1997, when two other former Klan members, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry, were finally brought to trial; Blanton was convicted in 2001 and Cherry in 2002. [114], His first parole hearing was held on August 3, 2016. He had repeatedly proclaimed his innocence, insisting Gary Thomas Rowe Jr. was the actual perpetrator. "[97] Cross testified that she would usually have accompanied her friends into the basement lounge to change into robes for the forthcoming sermon, but she had been given an assignment. Chambliss had been indicted by a grand jury on September 24, 1977, charged with four counts of murder, for each dead child in the 1963 church bombing. Although this march was met with fierce resistance and criticism, and 600 arrests were made on the first day alone, the Birmingham campaign and its Children's Crusade continued until May 5. Most parishioners were able to evacuate the building as it filled with smoke, but the bodies of four young girls (14-year-old Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson and 11-year-old Denise McNair) were found beneath the rubble in a basement restroom. Cars parked beside the church were damaged by the blast. On May 15,[121] Cross testified that prior to the explosion, she and the four girls killed had each attended a Youth Day Sunday School lesson in which the theme taught was how to react to a physical injustice. The Aftermath. The files were sealed by order of J. Edgar Hoover. The Birmingham church bombing occurred on September 15, 1963, when a bomb exploded before Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabamaa church with a. Martin Luther King Jr. holds a press conference in Birmingham the day after the attack. Cobbs also testified that approximately one week after the bombing, she had observed Chambliss watching a news article relating to the four girls killed in the bombing. Robinson died before reaching the hospital. The day following the bombing, a young white lawyer named Charles Morgan Jr. addressed a meeting of businessmen, condemning the acquiescence of white people in Birmingham toward the oppression of blacks. "[88][89], On the same afternoon that Chambliss's guilty verdict was announced, prosecutor Baxley issued a subpoena to Thomas Blanton to appear in court about the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. All Rights Reserved. Carole Robertson (aged 14) and Denise McNair (aged . appreciated. (Upon cross-examination by defense attorney Art Hanes Jr., Cantrell conceded that Chambliss had emphatically denied bombing the church. [127] In this role, Rowe acted as an agent provocateur between 1961[128] and 1965. [26], The explosion blew a hole measuring seven feet (2.1m) in diameter in the church's rear wall, and a crater five feet (1.5m) wide and two feet (0.61m) deep in the ladies' basement lounge, destroying the rear steps to the church and blowing a passing motorist out of his car. At that point, Black Americans were forced to read more, The Orangeburg Massacre occurred on the night of February 8, 1968, when a civil rights protest at South Carolina State University (SC State) turned deadly after highway patrolmen opened fire on about 200 unarmed black student protestors. "[9] Birmingham's Commissioner of Public Safety, Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor,[10] led the effort in enforcing racial segregation in the city through the use of violent tactics. The most seriously injured survivor of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, Sarah Jean Collins, remained hospitalized for more than two months, Within two days of the church bombing, Petts had contacted then-pastor of the church, the Reverend John Cross, announcing he had launched a fundraising campaign to create this sculpture via an appeal conducted through the, John Petts died in 1991 at the age of 77. The act of terror by four members of the KKK at the historic Black church killed four little girls: 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley and 11-year-old Denise McNair. Following the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, newly-inaugurated President Lyndon Johnson continued to press for passage of the civil rights bill sought by his predecessor. The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was a white supremacist terrorist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sunday, September 15, 1963. Herman Frank Cash died of cancer in February 1994. The first of these witnesses was Tom Cook, a retired Birmingham police officer, who testified on November 15 as to a conversation he had had with Chambliss in 1975. Petts then elaborated that the inspiration for the stained-glass image was a verse from the, On the 27th anniversary of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, a state historic marker was unveiled at Greenwood Cemetery, the final resting place of three of the four victims of the bombing (Carole Robertson's body had been reburied in Greenwood Cemetery in 1974, following the death of her father). [36] She had 21 pieces of glass embedded in her face and was blinded in one eye. 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. His testimony was restricted to the areas of the recordings permitted into evidence. Brogdon also testified that Cherry had told her of his regret that children had died in the bombing, before adding his satisfaction that they would never reproduce. 9:01 AM EDT, Wed September 7, 2022, A grieving relative is led away from the site of the. Seven witnesses testified on behalf of the prosecution, and two for the defense. Although reports of the bombing and the loss of four children's lives were glorified by white supremacists, who in many instances chose to celebrate the loss as "four less niggers",[41] as news of the church bombing and the fact that four young girls had been killed in the explosion reached the national and international press, many felt that they had not taken the civil rights struggle seriously enough. He said that Cherry had signed an affidavit in the presence of the FBI on October 9, 1963, confirming that he, Chambliss, and Blanton were at these premises on this date.[123]. On April 10, 2001, Judge James Garrett indefinitely postponed Cherry's trial, pending further medical analysis. Future United States Senator Doug Jones successfully prosecuted Blanton and Cherry. He was 82 years old. Although the FBI had concluded in 1965 that the 16th Street . The bombing, perpetrated by a white supremacist, became a defining moment of the Civil Rights Movement and sparked the outrage that led to the . [125], When asked by the judge whether he had anything to say before sentence was imposed, Cherry motioned to the prosecutors and stated: "This whole bunch lied through this thing [the trial]. The citys police commissioner, Eugene Bull Connor, was notorious for his willingness to use brutality in combating radical demonstrators, union members and any Black citizens. Blanton's attorneys criticized the validity and quality of the 16 tape recordings introduced as evidence,[103] arguing that the prosecution had edited and spliced the sections of the audio recording that were secretly obtained within Blanton's kitchen, reducing the entirety of the tape by 26 minutes. September 15, 1963 - Four girls are killed and 14 injured in a bomb blast at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.- Riots break out, and two African-American boys, Virgil Ware, 13, and Johnny Robinson, 16, are also killed. However, none of these explosions had resulted in fatalities. [30] Another victim was killed by a piece of mortar embedded in her skull. [101], The most crucial piece of evidence presented at Blanton's trial was an audio recording secretly taped by the FBI in June 1964, in which Blanton was recorded discussing his involvement in the bombing with his wife, who can be heard accusing her husband of conducting an affair with a woman named Waylen Vaughn two nights before the bombing. Although never formally named as one of the conspirators by the FBI, Rowe's record of deception on the polygraph tests leaves open the possibility that Chambliss's claims may have held a degree of truth. [11] The intentional scope of these activities was to see the end of segregation across Birmingham and the South as a whole. The death of those four girls is what inspired the poem from Dudley Randall, "Ballad of Birmingham". It was declared a national historic landmark in 2006. [144], 1963 white supremacist terrorist attack in Birmingham, Alabama, United States, The four girls killed in the bombing (clockwise from top left) Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Carole Robertson (14), and Carol Denise McNair (11), Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham Board of Education, Armstrong v. Birmingham Board of Education, Smith v. Young Men's Christian Association, University of Alabama desegregation crisis, Tuskegee High School desegregation crisis, 1963 Birmingham campaign's Children's Crusade, Mass racial violence in the United States, Racial segregation of churches in the United States, Timeline of terrorist attacks in the United States, "How Much Has Changed Since the Birmingham Church Bombing? ] he was incarcerated at the Hillman Emergency Clinic he had repeatedly proclaimed his,... To focus their attention upon a KKK splinter group known as the `` Cahaba Boys '' of prosecution... 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