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Thomas
E. BLANTON Jr.
Classification: Mass murderer
Characteristics: Ku Klux Klan
member - Bombing of a black church
Thomas E. Blanton Trial (Alabama
Church Bombing): 2001 - A Short Trial And A Quick Verdict
On the first day of testimony the
prosecution, led by Doug Jones, a U.S. attorney who had been
deputized to prosecute the case in state court, presented
numerous witnesses who were present at the time of the
bombing.
These witnesses included the mother of
Denise McNair, who was teaching a Sunday school class, and
the pastor, the Reverend John Cross, who described digging
through the rubble to find the bodies of the girls.
Other prosecution witnesses included the
FBI agents who had interviewed Blanton after the bombing and
who had investigated the case over the following months, the
informant Mitchell Burns, and others who described the
surveillance and secret taping of Blanton. Others testified
to the virulence of Blanton's segregationist views and to
his involvement in Ku Klux Klan activities.
On April 27 in a crowded courtroom the
jurors first heard segments of the FBI tapes. Some were made
on a tape recorder which the FBI had placed in the trunk of
Burns's car; others were obtained by the use of a microphone
implanted in a wall of the kitchen of Blanton's apartment by
FBI technicians, who, posing as truck drivers, had rented
the adjoining unit.
The defense was unsuccessful in seeking
to prevent the playing of the tapes, which were made in 1964
and 1965 before Congress restricted such secret taping
without a court order. In crucial sections of the tapes
Blanton tells Burns that the bombing of the 16th St. Church
"wasn't easy," and in a conversation with his then-wife,
Blanton talks of going to a meeting "to plan the bomb."
However, at no time did Blanton
explicitly admit to having carried out the bombing, and
Mitchell Burns acknowledged under cross-examination that in
none of the many conversations he had had with Blanton had
he ever done so.
A court-appointed attorney, John C.
Robbins, represented Blanton. In his statements to the jury
Robbins acknowledged Blanton's racist views, but exhorted
jurors not to be influenced by the historical significance
of the bombing, or by the emotional testimony of
eyewitnesses.
He reiterated that the prosecution's case
was entirely circumstantial, and that there was no evidence
proving that his client was responsible for the bombing.
During cross-examination Robbins was able to expose flaws in
the memories of some witnesses, and to cast some doubt on
the reliability and credibility of others. Blanton did not
testify, and the defense called only two witnesses.
The trial lasted only a little over a
week, and the case went to the jury on May 1. They
deliberated for only a little over two hours before
returning a verdict of guilty on all four counts. Jurors
subsequently acknowledged that the FBI tapes were the
evidence that led them to convict. Thomas Blanton was
sentenced to a term of life imprisonment for each of the
four murders.
Ex Klansman gets
life for '63 church bombing
By Joe Danborn
BIRMINGHAM - Jurors deliberated just 2 1/2 hours
before finding Thomas Blanton Jr. guilty Tuesday of first-degree murder
four times over for the 1963 bombing of a black church.
One juror wept as the forewoman, a middle-aged black
woman, read the verdicts in a quavering voice. The verdict automatically
means four sentences of life in prison for Blanton, 62.
"I guess the good Lord will settle it on Judgment Day,"
the former Ku Klux Klansman told Jefferson County Circuit Judge James
Garrett. Blanton's eyes grew moist as three sheriff's deputies then led
him from the courtroom in handcuffs.
Blanton's lawyer John Robbins said his client would
appeal.
Prosecutors indicted Blanton nearly a year ago after
reopening their investigation into the Sept. 15, 1963, bombing of the
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a focal point of the civil rights
movement. The blast injured more than 20 and took the lives of Denise
McNair, 11, and Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson,
all 14.
Chris and Maxine McNair, Denise's parents, and Junie
Collins, Addie's sister, shared hugs with U.S. Attorney Doug Jones, who
led the prosecution team in state court.
"Justice delayed is still justice, and we've got it
right here in Birmingham tonight," said Jones.
"I hope they get a little comfort in the verdict,"
Robbins said of the victims' families. "Our hearts go out to them."
Robbins sought earlier unsuccessfully to move the
trial out of Birmingham. "I would think that this trial in another
community... probably would have had a different verdict."
Garrett had sequestered the jurors and alternates
since April 23 and declined to release their names, in contrast with
normal trial procedure. None of them commented to the media Tuesday. "We
just want to go home and relax," one said.
As news of the verdict spread over the radio,
motorists honked and hung out of windows clapping as they passed by the
old Jefferson County Courthouse.
"I'll sleep well tonight, better than I've slept in
many years," said the Rev. Abraham Lincoln Woods, a leader of
Birmingham's black community who pushed authorities to reopen the case.
Woods, the president of Birmingham's Southern
Christian Leadership Conference and pastor at St. Joseph Baptist Church,
said the verdict "makes a statement of how far we've come."
Robbins said the short deliberations indicated jurors
disregarded the evidence and ruled with their sentiments. "Basically,
they were just caught up in the emotion of the case," he said.
Robbins said a main issue on appeal will be the
legality of surveillance tapes the FBI made at Blanton's apartment in
1964, without a warrant. He also said he plans to raise issues with the
appeals court involving jury selection but did not specify.
"You saw the makeup of the jury," he said of the
final panel, which included no white men. "Draw your own conclusions."
The jury that decided the case included eight white
women, three black women and one black man. Two white men and two black
men had been the alternates. The judge dismissed them before the jury
began deliberations.
Jones praised the jury.
"They thought about it. They deliberated. They
analyzed the evidence," he said. "There was not an overwhelming amount
of evidence for them to look at. ... That doesn't mean that they didn't
give it due consideration."
Estella Boyd, 73, a longtime church member who knew
the victims, wept softly moments after the verdict.
"I'm just happy he had the courage to drive the
matter," she said of Jones.
Among the more than 300 people who watched closing
arguments Tuesday morning were Jefferson County Circuit Judge Art Hanes
and former Birmingham Mayor Richard Arrington. Hanes defended Robert
"Dynamite Bob" Chambliss, the only other man convicted for the bombing,
in his 1977 trial. Chambliss died in prison in 1985.
Originally the FBI had four suspects in the bombing:
Chambliss, Blanton, Herman Cash and Bobby Frank Cherry. Cash died in
1994 before ever being charged. Cherry was indicted last year along with
Blanton. His trial was indefinitely postponed early last month when
Garrett ruled that he was not mentally competent. Prosecutors are
seeking another psychiatric evaluation, hoping to challenge Garrett's
ruling.
Chambliss' trial was held in the same courtroom as
Blanton's, three stories above a large lobby that features a pair of
two-story murals. One of them depicts an elegantly dressed white woman
high above slaves working in fields. The other shows a well-dressed
white businessman towering over black laborers in an iron mill.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Posey began the day by
reminding jurors of testimony that Blanton was a violent racist and a
womanizer in the 1960s. Posey rehashed other testimony as several giant
TV screens displayed family pictures of the four victims. He showed
Denise McNair's portrait last.
"This defendant killed this beautiful child because
of the color of her skin," Posey said. "He killed those four worshippers
in God's house on a Sunday morning because he was a man of hate."
Robbins urged jurors to look at what he called
insufficient evidence.
"We leave the emotion at home on the doorstep with
the families, where it belongs," Robbins said. The jury, he said, needed
to show the world that "we are not going to simply sacrifice some person
for some closure.
"If you do that, if you make your decision that way,
then those four girls died in vain," Robbins said.
Posey used the same phrase for the prosecution.
"These children must not have died in vain," Posey
said. "Don't let the deafening blast from his bomb be what's left
ringing in our ears."
Robbins told jurors their civic duty lay in rendering
an impartial verdict, not righting the wrongs of Birmingham's past.
"Don't get lost in the moment," Robbins told the jury.
"We've got a courtroom full of people thinking this is some moment in
history that we all have to watch. Don't get caught up in that."
Jones played to the 11-woman, one-man jury by
gesturing toward Maxine McNair and Alpha Robertson, Carole Robertson's
wheelchair-bound mother.
"A mother's heart never stops crying," Jones said
several times.
Jones recalled testimony from Sarah Collins Rudolph,
another sister of Addie's. Rudolph, who was in the same room as the
other four girls and was partially blinded, said she called out in vain
for her sister after the explosion.
"As Sarah called out to Addie," said Jones, noting
Monday would have been the dead girl's 51st birthday, "today, let us
call out to Addie."
Another Bomber Goes To Jail
2001 - The New York Times
In the spring of 1963, after months of demonstrations,
the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, a Birmingham, Ala., civil rights leader,
said the city had reached "an accord with its conscience" with regard to
desegregating downtown department stores. But on a deeper level,
Birmingham's conscience and that of the nation have been haunted by an
event that occurred a few months later, on Sept. 15.
A bomb planted by members of the Ku Klux Klan at the
16th Street Baptist Church killed four black girls Denise McNair, Carole
Robertson, Addie Mae Collins and Cynthia Wesley during Sunday services.
After decades of delay, justice and conscience moved more closely into
accord on Tuesday, when a Birmingham jury convicted Thomas Blanton Jr.
of murdering those children.
Nothing can make up fully for the delay caused by
decades of fitful cooperation between the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and local law enforcement. But with the Blanton conviction,
two of the four main suspects have received life sentences.
Robert Chambliss, known locally as "Dynamite Bob,"
was convicted in 1977 and died in prison in 1985. Those convictions send
a powerful message that succeeding generations of Southern prosecutors,
such as Doug Jones, the United States attorney in Birmingham, have not
forgotten the racial cases that had been either ignored or bungled.
The prosecution of the 16th Street case also stands
as a tribute to the dignified effort of Chris and Maxine McNair and
Alpha Robertson, parents of two of the victims, to keep the memory of
the case alive.
The prosecutorial history of the case is a tangled
and contentious one. J. Edgar Hoover, the F.B.I. director, originally
blocked prosecution of the case in 1965, overruling his own agents in
Birmingham who had filed reports that Robert Chambliss, Thomas Blanton,
Bobby Frank Cherry and Herman Cash, now deceased, had planted the bomb.
The Chambliss conviction was secured by Bill Baxley,
then the Alabama attorney general, when the F.B.I. gave him some of the
files that Hoover had sat on. But as Mr. Baxley argues in an article on
the adjoining page, the bureau withheld information supplied to Mr.
Jones for the Blanton trial after the local F.B.I. office reopened the
case in 1993.
Mr. Baxley believes that with full access to the
F.B.I. files he could have brought Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry
to trial with Robert Chambliss in 1977. The passage of time erodes the
evidence and available testimony in any case, and that makes Doug
Jones's ability to prevail on the highly circumstantial case that could
be put together this year a striking achievement.
He insisted that the F.B.I. give him full access to
9,000 documents and tapes, including the "kitchen tape" that probably
sent Thomas Blanton to jail. An F.B.I. listening device placed in the
Klansman's kitchen in 1964 caught him telling his wife about planning
and building "the bomb."
Although the two prosecutors differ on their view of
the F.B.I.'s role, there are some striking connections between the
trials. While in law school, Mr. Jones, a white Alabamian raised only a
few miles from the bombed church, watched Mr. Baxley, another white
Alabamian, conduct the Chambliss trial.
Racial tensions were still close to the surface in
Alabama in 1977, and that trial may have cost Mr. Baxley his chance to
be governor. But in both cases, it was a biracial jury of Birmingham
citizens that brought in speedy and stern verdicts.
The lengthy complications can be viewed as cruelly
frustrating, but there is also room for the more positive point
suggested by Doug Jones on Tuesday. "Justice delayed is still justice,"
he said. A Mississippi court's conviction in 1994 of Byron De La
Beckwith in the Medgar Evers murder and now the fact that 62-year-old
Thomas Blanton is headed for prison both show that a belated prosecution
is better than none at all.
There is one more chapter to be played out in the
Birmingham story. Bobby Frank Cherry, now 72, has been indicted for
murder, but was declared mentally incompetent to stand trial after a
psychiatric evaluation. Mr. Jones has secured an order by the trial
judge, James Garrett, to allow a second examination.
Certainly Mr. Cherry's legal rights have to be
protected by the court. But if a new medical opinion, expected in one to
two months, allows the trial to go forward, it is reassuring to know
that the Birmingham of today has a prosecutor ready for trial, a full
bundle of F.B.I. evidence and juries willing to reach a just verdict in
a complicated case.
The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing
From Jessica McElrath
The Murder of Four Girls
On the early Sunday morning of September 15, 1963, Ku
Klux Klan member, Robert Edward Chambliss stood a few blocks away from
the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. On this
morning, five girls were changing into their choir robes in the church
basement.
At 10:19 a.m., a bomb exploded, killing four of the
girls and injuring twenty people. The four girls who died were eleven-year
old Denise McNair, and fourteen year olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole
Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley.
The Significance of the 16th Street Baptist Church
The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church had served as an
important part of the African-American community and was used as a
meeting place during the civil rights movement.
The church was used for mass rallies and Martin
Luther King Jr. was among the many leaders who spoke at these events. It
had also been the headquarters for several desegregation protests. When
the church was bombed, it was a sign of the hostility that
segregationists had against the civil rights struggle.
The Aftermath of the Bombing
While the bomb came as a surprise, bomb threats had
been made in the past. In those instances, the church had been able to
take special precautions. This time, no threat had been made. The
explosion blew a hole in the east side of the church. It shattered
windows, walls, doors, and the air was filled with a thick cloud of dust
and soot. As community members dug through the debris in search of
survivors, they discovered the bodies of the four victims.
Grief was not only felt in the African American
community, but white strangers expressed their sympathy to the families
of the four girls. At the funeral of three of the girls, Martin Luther
King gave the eulogy, which was witnessed by 8,000 mourners, both white
and black.
The Investigation into the Bombing
The FBI led the initial investigation into the
bombing. According to a 1965 FBI memorandum to director J. Edgar Hoover,
it was determined that Robert E. Chambliss, Bobby Frank Cherry, Herman
Frank Cash, and Thomas E. Blanton Jr. had planted the bomb.
Based on the investigation, the Birmingham FBI office
recommended prosecuting the suspects. Hoover, however, blocked their
prosecution by rejecting the recommendation that the federal prosecutor
receive the testimony that identified the suspects. By 1968, charges had
not been filed and the FBI closed the case.
In 1971, Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley,
reopened the case. On November 18, 1977, Robert Chambliss was convicted
of murder and sentenced to life in prison. The case was again reopened
in 1988 and in July 1997, after the FBI received a tip. Herman Frank
Cash was still one of the prime suspects, but before a case could be
established against him, he died in 1994.
On May 17, 2000, Thomas Blanton Jr. and Bobby Frank
Cherry were charged with the murder of the four girls. Blanton was tried,
convicted, and sentenced to life in prison on May 1, 2001. For the
jurors who convicted him, the 1964 taped conversations that the FBI
secretly recorded, weighed heavily on their decision.
The tapes had
remained secret until 1997, when the case was reopened. In one recorded
conversation that took place between Blanton and his wife, Blanton told
her that he was at the Klan meeting where both the bombing was planned
and the bomb was made.
In another recorded conversation, Blanton spoke
about the bombing to an FBI informant while driving in a car. For the
jurors, the taped conversations provided enough evidence to convict
Blanton of murder.
Bobby Frank Cherry's trial was postponed after the judge ruled that he
was mentally incompetent to assist his attorney. After Cherry was found
competent to stand trail, on May 22, 2002 he was found guilty of four
counts of murder. He was sentenced to life in prison. For the family and
friends of the four murdered girls, the conviction of Blanton and Cherry
was a long awaited victory.
The 16th Street Baptist Church
bombing was a racially motivated terrorist incident
at 16th Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama, in
the United States. It was a turning-point in the U.S.
civil-rights movement of the mid 20th century.
Bombing
The attack was intended to instill
fear in those supporting equal civil rights without
regard to race. Instead, it caused public outrage and
spurred the civil-rights movement to further success.
The three-story 16th Street Baptist
Church was a rallying point for civil-rights activities.
In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, the
church's Youth Day, United Klans of America, a Ku Klux
Klan group, members Bobby Frank Cherry, Thomas Blanton
and Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss planted 19 sticks of
dynamite in the basement of the church. Chambliss was
also convicted of having 122 sticks of dynamite without
a permit.
At about 10:25 a.m., when 26 children
were walking into the basement assembly room for closing
prayers after a sermon entitled "The Love That Forgives,"
the bombs exploded. Four girls—Addie Mae Collins (aged
14), Denise McNair (11), Carole Robertson (14), and
Cynthia Wesley (14)—were killed in the blast, and 22
more were injured.
The explosion blew a hole in the
church's rear wall, destroyed the back steps, and left
intact only the frames of all but one stained-glass
window. The lone window that survived the concussion was
one in which Jesus Christ was depicted leading young
children, although Christ's face was destroyed. In
addition, five cars behind the church were damaged, two
of them completely destroyed, while windows in the
laundry across the street were blown out.
Victims
Born November 17, 1951, Denise
McNair was the first child of photo shop owner
Chris and schoolteacher Maxine McNair. Her playmates
called her Niecie. A pupil at Center Street
Elementary School, she had many friends. She held
tea parties, was a member of the Brownies, and
played baseball. She helped raise money to support
muscular dystrophy by creating plays, dance routines,
and poetry readings. These events became an annual
event. People gathered in the yard to watch the show
in Denise’s carport, the main stage. Children
donated their pennies, dimes, and nickels. Denise
was a schoolmate and friend of Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice.
Born April 30, 1949, Cynthia
Wesley was the first adopted daughter of Claude
and Gertrude Wesley, who were both teachers. Her
mother made her clothes because of her petite size.
Cynthia went to school at Ullman High School, which
no longer exists. She excelled in math, reading, and
band. Cynthia held parties in her backyard for all
her friends. Upon Cynthia’s death she was so
mutilated the only way to identify her was by the
ring she wore, which was recognized by her father.
Carole Robertson was born
April 24, 1949. She was the third child of Alpha and
Alvin Robertson. Her sister was Dianne and her
brother was Alvin. Her father was a band master at
the local elementary school. Her mother was a
librarian, avid reader, dancer, and clarinet player.
Carole, like her mother, enjoyed reading. She
excelled at school and was a straight-A student, a
member of Parker High School marching band and
science club. She was also a Girl Scout and belonged
to Jack and Jill of America. When she was at
Wilkerson Elementary School she sang in the choir.
Her legacy helped create the Carole Robertson Center
for Learning in Chicago, a social service agency
that serves children and their families.
Addie Mae Collins was born
April 18, 1949, the daughter of Oscar and Alice. Her
father was a janitor and her mother a homemaker. She
was one of seven children. Addie was the peacemaker
between the bunch. She was also an avid softball
player. A youth center dedicated to Addie and her
ideals was created in Alabama.
Aftermath
Outrage at the bombing and the grief
that followed resulted in violence across Birmingham,
with two more African-American youths dead by the end of
the day. Sixteen year-old Johnnie Robinson was shot and
killed by police after throwing stones at cars with
white people inside, while 13-year-old Virgil Ware was
killed by two whites riding on a motor scooter.
Three days after the tragedy, former
Birmingham police commissioner Bull Connor further
inflamed matters by saying to a crowd of 2,500 people at
a Citizen's Council meeting, "If you're going to blame
anyone for getting those children killed in Birmingham,
it's your Supreme Court." Connor recalled that in 1954,
after the Brown v. Board of Education decision
had been reached, he said, "You're going to have
bloodshed, and it's on them (the Court), not us." He
also proposed that African-Americans may have set the
bomb deliberately to provoke an emotional response,
saying, "I wouldn't say it's above (Dr. Martin Luther)
King's crowd."
Investigation and prosecution
Chambliss was initially charged for
the murders, but there was no conviction at first. Years
later it was found that the FBI had accumulated evidence
against the bombers that had not been revealed to the
prosecutors, by order of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
In 1977, Chambliss was prosecuted by Alabama Attorney-General
Bill Baxley and was convicted for the four murders and
sentenced to several terms of life imprisonment. He died
in prison in 1985.
After reopening the case several
times, the FBI in 2000 assisted the state authorities in
bringing charges against Cherry and Thomas Blanton.
Blanton and Cherry were convicted by state court juries
of all four murders and sentenced to life in prison.
Though Cherry publicly denied involvement, relatives and
friends testified that he "bragged" about being part of
the bombing, and his ex-wife testified, "He said he lit
the fuse."
"Following the tragic event, white
strangers visited the grieving families to express their
sorrow. At the funeral for three of the girls (one
family preferred a separate, private funeral), Martin
Luther King, Jr., spoke about life being "as hard as
crucible steel." More than 8,000 mourners, including 800
clergymen of both races, attended the service.
Remembrances
The song "Birmingham Sunday",
composed by Richard Farina and recorded by Joan Baez,
chronicled the events and aftermath of the bombing.
The song "Mississippi Goddam" was
composed and sung by Nina Simone in reaction to the
racially-motivated bombings.
A 1997 documentary about the
bombing, 4 Little Girls, directed by Spike
Lee, was nominated for an Academy Award for "Best
Documentary".
The song "Alabama' on John
Coltrane's Live at Birdland (recorded
November 18, 1963) served as an elegy to the bombing.
The song "Ronnie & Neil" on
Drive-By Truckers' double album, Southern Rock
Opera references the event in the opening line
of the song, "Church blows up in Birmingham/ Four
little black girls killed/ For no goddamned good
reason."
The novel The Watsons Go to
Birmingham: 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis
mentions very vividly the events of the bombing.
The poem "The Ballad of
Birmingham" by Dudley Randall
The song "American Guernica" by
Adolphus Hailstork
A 2002 television drama Sins
of the Father, directed by Robert Dornhelm, is
based on the events of the bombing.
Further
reading
Branch, Taylor (1988). Parting the Waters:
America in the King Years, 1954 -1963. New York:
Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-68742-5.
Sikora, Frank (April 1991). Until Justice Rolls
Down: The Birmingham Church Bombing Case.
Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. ISBN
0-8173-0520-3.
Cobbs, Elizabeth H.; Smith, Petric J. (April 1994).
Long Time Coming: An Insider’s Story of the
Birmingham Church Bombing that Rocked the World.
Birmingham, AL: Crane Hill. ISBN 1-881548-10-4.
Hamlin, Christopher M.: 1998, Behind the Stained
Glass: A History of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church,
Crane Hill Publishers, Birmingham, AL
