The Civil Rights Movement continues: Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson, all aged 14 years, and Denise McNair, 11, are murdered by a terrorist bombing in the Birmingham, alabama, 16th Street Baptist Church. Twenty-two others are injured.
Postscripts:
- Within days, the Federal Bureau of Investigation accumulated enough evidence against Thomas E. Blanton, Jr., Robert E. “Dynamite Bob” Chambliss, Herman Frank Cash and Bobby Frank Cherry (all members of the Ku Klux Klan), to turn over to the Jefferson County prosecutor—who wanted a conviction on the case. But J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, called off the investigation, because an “all-white” jury would probably exonerate the suspects.
- Chambliss, considered the prime conspirator, was convicted of another murder in 1997; Cash died peacefully in 1994; Blanton was convicted for his role in 2000; and Cherry was convicted in 2002.
- As a result of this reprehensible, sadistic attack on innocent children membership in the KKK membership began to drop precipitously.
[restored 10/8/2022]
Subsequent Events:
References:
Jeffery Gettleman, “Judge Rules Ex-Klansman Fit for Trial in 1963 Deaths,” Los Angeles Times, 4 January 2002, A24.
Calvin D. Linton, ed., The Bicentennial Almanac: 200 Years of America, 1776-1976, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 1975), 399.
16th Street Baptist Church bombing – Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16th_Street_Baptist_Church_bombing
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