The 16th Street Bombing
The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was a place for many people involved in the Civil Rights Movement to meet up with each other. On a Sunday in September 1963, a bomb exploded in the church, killing four young girls. 11-year-old Denise McNair, 14-year-old Carole Robertson, 14-year-old Cynthia Wesley, and 14-year-old Addie Mae Collins were killed in the blast, and more than 20 others were injured. Addie Mae Collin’s sister lost one of her eyes in the bombing. Witnesses said they saw a white man put a box underneath the Church steps after getting out of his Chevrolet car. The police arrested Robert Chambliss, a member of the UKA, after he was identified by a witness, charged him with murder, in addition to "…possessing a box of 122 sticks of dynamite without a permit." The trial took place in October, but Chambliss was not convicted of murder. He did receive a fine of one hundred dollars and six months in jail for possession of the dynamite. He was tried again when Bill Baxley, the attorney general of Alabama, realized that much of the evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had against Chambliss was not used in his original trial. It was not until 1977 that he was convicted with the murder of the four girls, and he received life in prison at 73 years old, where he eventually died. Chambliss never confessed to the bombing. On May 16, 2000, the remaining indictments were handed to suspects, and the court found that UKA members Robert Chambliss, Thomas Blanton, and Bobby Frank Cherry were the ones who planted 19 sticks of dynamite that were used in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. In 2001, Thomas Blanton, Jr. was sentenced to life in prison following his trial where he was charged with murder. The next year, in 2002, Bobby Frank Cherry also was tried for murder and he, too, received life in prison.
Read more about this topic: United Klans Of America
Famous quotes containing the words street and/or bombing:
“You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed’s edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“The compulsion to do good is an innate American trait. Only North Americans seem to believe that they always should, may, and actually can choose somebody with whom to share their blessings. Ultimately this attitude leads to bombing people into the acceptance of gifts.”
—Ivan Illich (b. 1926)