by The Jacksonville Bar Association President Courtney Grimm
In the early morning hours of Sunday, Sept. 15, 1963, “The Cahaba River Bridge Boys,” members of a Ku Klux Klan group, planted a box of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the Birmingham, Ala., Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.
At about 10:22 a.m., 26 children were walking into the basement assembly room to prepare for a sermon entitled “The Love That Forgives,” when the bomb exploded.
Four girls, Addie Mae Collins (age 14), Denise McNair (age 11), Carole Robertson (age 14), and Cynthia Wesley (age 14), were killed in the attack, and 22 additional people were injured, one of whom was Addie Mae Collins’ younger sister, Sarah.
The explosion blew a hole in the church’s rear wall, destroyed the back steps and all but one stained-glass window. The basement lounge where the four girls died had been reduced to a mound of brick, the rubble illuminated by sunshine pouring through the gaping hole in the church wall.
The hoods of cars outside had been folded in two. In a shop across the street, the bomb stopped a clock at 10:24 a.m.
‘’When the bomb went off, the clock stopped and time for Birmingham stood still,’’ reflected Doug Jones, a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama.
Following the tragic event, strangers visited the grieving families of the young girls to express their sorrow. At the funeral for three of the girls, Martin Luther King Jr., who with other civil rights leaders had used the church as a meeting place, spoke about life being “as hard as crucible steel” and predicted that ‘’this tragic event may cause the white South to come to terms with its conscience.’’
The South did change. The bombing increased worldwide sympathy for the civil rights cause; on July 2, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ensuring equal rights of African-Americans before the law. The killers of the girls hid for decades in silence that cracked only when they boasted of their involvement with people they believed held the same hatred.
This historic crime did exactly the opposite of what the bombers had hoped it would do. Instead of forcing black leaders to beg for segregation, it shamed and sickened white citizens.
FBI investigations gathered evidence pointing to four suspects: Robert Chambliss, Thomas E. Blanton Jr., Herman Cash and Bobby Frank Cherry.
Chambliss, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, was identified as the man who placed the bomb under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. He was arrested and charged with murder and possessing a box of 122 sticks of dynamite without a permit. On Oct. 8, 1963, Chambliss was found not guilty of murder and received a $100 fine and a six-month jail sentence for having the dynamite.
According to a later report of the FBI, “By 1965, we had serious suspects .... but witnesses were reluctant to talk and physical evidence was lacking. ... As a result, no federal charges were filed in the ‘60s.”
The case was unsolved until William Baxley was elected Attorney General of Alabama in 1971. At the time of the bombing, Baxley was a law student at the University of Alabama and upon becoming Attorney General at the age of 28, sought to hold accountable those responsible.
He requested the original FBI files on the case and discovered that a great deal of evidence against Chambliss had been accumulated
In 1977, Chambliss, nicknamed ‘’Dynamite Bob’’ for his links to so many of the more than 40 blasts that terrorized black citizens in the civil rights era, was indicted in the murder of all four girls and tried once again for the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing.
At the age of 73, Chambliss was convicted of the first degree murder of Denise McNair and sentenced to life imprisonment. Chambliss died eight years later in an Alabama prison.
Twenty-four years after Chambliss’ trial and 38 years after the bombing, Doug Jones, a U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, sought to finish what Baxley began. As a law student, Jones had watched Baxley’s trial of Chambliss and determined to pursue the others responsible.
Herman Cash, whose family ran a barbecue restaurant that became a hangout for Klansmen, had died in 1994 without having been charged or tried.
However, Jones saw to the indictment and conviction of Thomas Blanton Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry, bringing to a close a flawed and delayed investigation into the bombing, which, despite gaps of decades in its progress, finally brought justice.
Come to our member luncheon on Feb. 22 and hear, firsthand, from Bill Baxley and Doug Jones. The JBA is privileged to present this program of professionalism, commitment and inspiration by two lawyers who pursued justice in its noblest fashion.