When asked by the judge during sentencing if he had any comment, Blanton said: “I guess the good Lord will settle it on judgment day.” Ivey, in a statement, called the bombing “a dark day that will never be forgotten in both Alabama’s history and that of our nation.” In May 2001, Blanton was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison for the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. He was being held at Donaldson prison near Birmingham, prison officials said. Kay Ivey’s office said Blanton died of natural causes. (AP) - Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., the last of three one-time Ku Klux Klansmen convicted in a 1963 Alabama church bombing that killed four Black girls and was the deadliest single attack of the civil rights movement, died Friday in prison, officials said. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.īIRMINGHAM, Ala. Blanton was convicted in 2001 and Cherry in 2002.Ī fourth suspect, Herman Frank Cash, died in 1994 before he could be brought to trial.This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. The case was again reopened in 1980, 19, when two other former Klan members, Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry, were finally brought to trial. Chambliss maintained his innocence and died in prison in 1985. Chambliss was brought to trial for the bombings and convicted of murder. Edgar Hoover, then-head of the FBI, disapproved of the civil rights movement he died in 1972.)Īlabama Attorney General Bill Baxley in 1977 reopened the investigation. It was later revealed that the FBI had information concerning the identity of the bombers by 1965 and did nothing. Though Birmingham’s white supremacists were immediately suspected in the bombing, repeated calls for the perpetrators to be brought to justice went unanswered for more than a decade. Some 1,600 people attended a separate funeral for Robertson. spoke before 8,000 people at an emotional funeral for three of the girls at the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church. Two Black males were killed (one by police) before the National Guard was called in to restore order.ĭr. When segregationist Governor George Wallace sent police and state troopers to break the protests up, violence broke out across the city. Thousands of angry Black protesters gathered at the scene of the bombing. The bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church was the third bombing in 11 days, after a federal court order had come down mandating the integration of Alabama’s school system. More than 20 other people were injured in the blast. Most parishioners were able to evacuate the building as it filled with smoke, but the bodies of Collins, Wesley, Robertson and McNair were found beneath the rubble in a basement restroom.Įleven-year-old Sarah Collins, who was also in the restroom at the time of the explosion, lost her right eye. service when 15 sticks of dynamite exploded on the church’s east side, spraying mortar and bricks from the front of the church and caving in its interior walls. Many were attending Sunday school classes before the start of the 11 a.m. on the morning of September 15, 1963, some 200 church members were in the church. The four Black girls spent the last moments of their young lives in the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church.Īt 10:22 a.m. THE FOUR GIRLS in bombing (clockwise from left to right) Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Carole Denise McNair 16th Street Baptist Church bombing girls.īlanton was convicted in 2001 and sentenced to life in prison for murdering Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, all 14, and Denise McNair, 11. Three other killers who were convicted for participating in the bombing, died decades ago. After dodging justice for 38 years, Blanton was convicted in 2001 for a bombing that shocked and outraged the nation and fueled the Civil Rights Movement.īlanton, 86, is the last surviving convicted killer in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. The Alabama Board of Pardons in 2016 denied Blanton’s request for parole after he asked to die a free man. Former Ku Klux Klan member Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., who was convicted of murder in the infamous bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, is up for parole next year.
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