16th Street Baptist Church bombing

The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was an act of white supremacist terrorism which occurred at the African-American 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on Sunday, September 15, 1963, when four members of the Ku Klux Klan planted at least 15 sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device beneath the front steps of the church. Described by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as "one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity", the explosion at the church killed four girls and injured 22 others. Although the FBI had concluded in 1965 that the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing had been committed by four known Ku Klux Klansmen and segregationists — Thomas Edwin Blanton, Jr., Herman Frank Cash, Robert Edward Chambliss, and Bobby Frank Cherry — no prosecutions ensued until 1977, when Robert Chambliss was tried and convicted of the first degree murder of one of the victims, 11-year-old Carol Denise McNair. Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry were each convicted of four counts of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2001 and 2002 respectively, whereas Herman Cash, who died in 1994, was never charged with his alleged involvement in the bombing. The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing marked a turning point in the United States during the Civil Rights Movement and contributed to support for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Background: In the years leading 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 of any form was met with violent resistance. Dr. Martin Luther King described Birmingham as "probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States". The city had no black police officers or firefighters, and few of the city's black residents were registered to vote. Bombings at black institutions were a regular occurrence: Birmingham had seen at least 21 separate explosions at black properties and churches in the eight years before 1963, although none of these explosions had resulted in fatalities. These attacks had earned the city the nickname "Bombingham". The Birmingham Campaign and the 16th Street Baptist Church: The three-story 16th Street Baptist Church had become a rallying point for civil rights activities through the spring of 1963, and became the location where students who were arrested during the 1963 Birmingham campaign's Children's Crusade had been organized and trained by Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Director of Direct Action, James Bevel. The church was also used as a meeting-place for other civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and Fred Shuttlesworth. Tensions further escalated when the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Congress on Racial Equality became involved in a campaign to register African-Americans to vote in Birmingham. On 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. Demonstrators present were given instructions to march to downtown Birmingham and discuss with the mayor their concerns about racial segregation in Birmingham, then to integrate buildings and businesses currently segregated. Although this march was met with fierce resistance and criticism, and saw up to 600 arrests on the first day alone, the Birmingham campaign and its Children's Crusade continued until May 5. These demonstrations led to an agreement, on May 8, between the city's business leaders and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to integrate public facilities, including schools, in the city within 90 days. (The first three schools in Birmingham to become integrated would do so on September 4.) These demonstrations, and the concessions from city leaders to the majority of demonstrators' demands, were met with fierce resistance in Birmingham. In the weeks following the September 4 integration of public schools, three further bombs had been detonated in Birmingham. Other acts of violence followed the settlement, and several staunch Ku Klux Klansmen were known to have expressed frustration at what they saw as a lack of effective resistance to integration. The 16th Street Baptist Church—a known and popular rallying point for civil rights activists—had become an obvious target. The bombing: In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, four members of the United Klans of America: Thomas Edwin Blanton, Jr.; Herman Frank Cash; Robert Edward Chambliss; and Bobby Frank Cherry, planted a minimum of 15 sticks of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the church, close to the basement. At approximately 10:22 a.m., an anonymous man phoned the 16th Street Baptist Church. The call was answered by the acting Sunday School secretary: a 14-year-old girl named Carolyn Maull. To Maull, the anonymous caller simply said the words, "Three minutes", before terminating the call. Less than one minute later, the bomb exploded as five children were present within the basement assembly, changing into their choir robes in preparation for a sermon entitled "A Love That Forgives". According to one survivor, the explosion shook the entire building and propelled the girls' bodies through the air "like rag dolls". The explosion blew a hole measuring seven feet in diameter in the church's rear wall, and a crater five feet wide and two feet deep in the ladies' basement lounge, destroying the rear steps to the church and blowing one passing motorist out of his car. Several other cars parked near the site of the blast were destroyed, and windows of properties located more than two blocks from the church were also damaged. All but one of the church's stained-glass windows were destroyed in the explosion. The sole stained-glass window largely undamaged in the explosion depicted Christ leading a group of young children. 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. An estimated 2,000 black people, many of them hysterical, converged on the scene in the hours following the explosion as the church's pastor, the Reverend John Cross, Jr., attempted to placate the crowd by loudly reciting the 23rd Psalm through a bullhorn. One individual who converged on the scene to help search for survivors, Charles Vann, later recollected that he had observed a solitary white man whom he recognized as Robert Edward Chambliss (a known member of the Ku Klux Klan) standing alone and motionless at a barricade. According to Vann's later testimony, Chambliss was standing "looking down toward the church, like a firebug watching his fire". Four girls, Addie Mae Collins (age 14), Carol Denise McNair (age 11), Carole Robertson (age 14), and Cynthia Wesley (age 14), were killed in the attack. The explosion was so intense that one of the girls' bodies was decapitated and so badly mutilated in the explosion that her body could only be identified through her clothing and a ring, whereas another victim had been killed by a piece of mortar embedded in her skull. All four girls were pronounced dead on arrival at the Hillman Emergency Clinic. The then-pastor of the church, the Reverend John Cross, would recollect in 2001 that the girls' bodies were subsequently found "stacked on top of each other, clung together". More than 20 additional people were injured in the explosion, one of whom was Addie Mae's younger sister, 12-year-old Sarah Collins, who had 21 pieces of glass embedded in her face and was blinded in one eye. In her later recollections of the bombing, Collins would recall that in the moments immediately before the explosion, she had observed her sister, Addie, tying her dress sash. Another sister of Addie Mae Collins, 16-year-old Junie Collins, would later recall that shortly before the explosion, she had been sitting in the basement of the church reading the Bible and had observed Addie Mae Collins tying the dress sash of Carol Denise McNair before she had herself returned upstairs to the ground floor of the church. Reactions and condemnation: As violence escalated in Birmingham in the hours following the bombing, 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. Birmingham City Council convened an emergency meeting to propose safety measures for the city, although proposals for a curfew were rejected. Within 24 hours of the bombing, a minimum of five businesses and properties had been firebombed and numerous cars—most of which were driven by whites—had been stoned by rioting youths. In response to the church bombing, described by the Mayor of Birmingham, Albert Boutwell, as "just sickening", the Attorney General dispatched 25 FBI agents, including explosives experts, to Birmingham to conduct a thorough forensic investigation. 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 of "four less niggers", 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. 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 towards the oppression of blacks. In this speech, Morgan addressed his audience with a speech in which he lamented: "Who did it the bombing? We all did it! The 'who' is every little individual who talks about the 'niggers' and spreads the seeds of his hate to his neighbor and his son ... What's it like living in Birmingham? No one ever really has known and no one will until this city becomes part of the United States." A Milwaukee Sentinel editorial opined, "For the rest of the nation, the Birmingham church bombing should serve to goad the conscience. The deaths... in a sense, are on the hands of each of us." Two more black youths, Johnny Robinson and Virgil Ware, were shot to death in Birmingham within seven hours of the Sunday morning bombing. Robinson, aged 16, was shot in the back by a policeman as he fled down an alley, after ignoring police orders to halt. The police were reportedly responding to black youths throwing rocks at cars driven by white people. Robinson died before reaching the hospital. Ware, aged 13, was shot in the cheek and chest with a revolver[39] in a residential suburb 15 miles north of the city. A 16-year-old white youth named Larry Sims fired the gun (given to him by another youth named Michael Farley) at Ware, who was sitting on the handlebars of a bicycle ridden by his brother. Sims and Farley had been riding home from an anti-integration rally which had denounced the church bombing. When he spotted Ware and his brother, Sims fired twice, reportedly with his eyes closed. (Sims and Farley were later convicted of second-degree manslaughter, although the judge suspended their sentences and imposed two years' probation upon each youth.) Some civil rights activists blamed George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama and an outspoken segregationist, for creating the climate that had led to the killings. One week before the bombing, Wallace granted an interview with a The New York Times journalist in which he said he believed Alabama needed a "few first-class funerals" to stop racial integration. The city of Birmingham initially offered a $52,000 reward for the arrest of the bombers. Governor George Wallace himself offered an additional $5,000 on behalf of the state of Alabama. Although this donation was accepted, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is known to have informed Wallace via telegram of his belief that "the blood of four little children ... is on your hands. Your irresponsible and misguided actions have created in Birmingham and Alabama the atmosphere that has induced continued violence and now murder." Funerals: Carole Rosamond Robertson was laid to rest in a private family funeral held on September 17, 1963. Reportedly, Carole's mother, Alpha, had expressly requested her daughter be buried separately from the other victims due to her distress at a remark Martin Luther King had made in which he (King) said the mindset that had allowed the murder of the four girls was the "apathy and complacency" of black people in Alabama. The service for Carole Rosamond Robertson was held at St. John's African Methodist Episcopal Church. In attendance were 1,600 people. At this service, the Reverend C. E. Thomas addressed the congregation, informing them: "The greatest tribute you can pay to Carole is to be calm, be lovely, be kind, be innocent." Carole Robertson was buried in a blue casket at Shadow Lawn Cemetery. On September 18, the funeral of the three other girls killed in the bombing was held at the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church. Although no city officials attended this service, present at the girls' funerals were an estimated 800 clergymen of all races. Also present was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In a speech conducted before the burial of the girls, Dr. King addressed an estimated 3,300 mourners—including numerous white people—with a speech which included: "This tragic day may cause the white side to come to terms with its conscience. In spite of the darkness of this hour, we must not become bitter ... We must not lose faith in our white brothers. Life is hard. At times as hard as crucible steel, but, today, you do not walk alone." As the girls' coffins were led to their graves, Dr. King ordered that those present remain solemn and forbid any singing, shouting or demonstrations. These instructions were relayed to the crowd present by a single youth with a bullhorn. At the time of the funerals, two of those critically injured in the bombing were still hospitalized, as was a 16-year-old white teenager named Dennis Robertson, who had been hit on the head with a brick thrown by a black youth as Robertson cycled home from his job. Initial investigation: Initially, investigators theorized that a bomb thrown from a passing car had caused the explosion at the 16th Street Baptist church; however, by September 20, the FBI was able to confirm that the explosion had been caused by a device which had been purposely planted beneath the steps to the church, close to the women's lounge, where a section of wire and remnants of red plastic which could have been part of a timing device were discovered. (The plastic remnants were later lost by investigators.) Within days of the bombing, investigators began to focus their attention upon a Ku Klux Klan splinter group known as the "Cahaba Boys". The Cahaba Boys had formed earlier in 1963 due to a mutual feeling the Ku Klux Klan was becoming restrained and impotent in response to concessions granted to blacks aimed at ending racial segregation, and had previously been linked to several bomb attacks at black-owned businesses and the homes of black community leaders throughout the spring and summer of 1963. Although the Cahaba Boys consisted of less than 30 active members, this splinter group included Thomas Blanton, Jr., Herman Cash, Robert Chambliss, and Bobby Cherry. Investigators also gathered numerous witness statements attesting to a group of white men in a turquoise 1957 Chevrolet who had been seen near the church in the early hours of the morning of September 15. These witness statements specifically indicated that a white man had exited the car and walked towards the steps of the church. (The physical description of the individual who had exited the car varied, and could have matched either Bobby Cherry or Robert Chambliss.) Chambliss was questioned by the FBI on September 26. On September 29, Chambliss was indicted solely upon charges of illegally purchasing and transporting dynamite on September 4, 1963. He and two acquaintances named John Hall and Charles Cagle were each convicted upon a charge of illegally possessing and transporting dynamite on October 8—each receiving a $100 fine and a suspended 180-day jail sentence. At the time, no federal charges were filed against Chambliss or any of his fellow conspirators in relation to the bombing. FBI closure of case: The FBI did encounter difficulties in their initial investigation into the bombing. One later report stated: "By 1965, we had four serious suspects—namely Thomas Blanton, Jr., Herman Frank Cash, Robert Chambliss, and Bobby Frank Cherry, all Klan members—but witnesses were reluctant to talk and physical evidence was lacking. Also, at that time, information from our surveillance was not admissible in court. As a result, no federal charges were filed in the '60s." 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. This information was relayed to the Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover; however, no prosecutions of the four suspects ensued, reportedly on the basis of mistrust between local and federal investigators. Later the same year, J. Edgar Hoover formally blocked any impending prosecutions against the suspects, and refused to disclose any evidence his agents had obtained with state or federal prosecutors. In 1968, the FBI formally closed their investigation into the bombing without filing charges against any of their named suspects. The files were sealed by order of J. Edgar Hoover.