Friday, September 15, 2023

60 Years -Since the Birmingham Church Bombing Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance


One of the worst instances of terrorism in the United States occurred sixty years ago. The bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama.  Joyce Vance tells the story of the struggle for Justice in that case.
One remarkable aspect of the case is that then U.S. Attorney Doug Jones successfully prosecuted two of the perpetrators.  He won a seat in the United States Senate against former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore who was credibly accused to have engaged in sexual abuse of young women.
But he lost his re-election bid to the former football coach Tommy Tuberville.
Tonight Ketanji Brown Jackson - the first African American woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court - will address a gathering at the 16th Avenue Baptist Church.
- GWC
60 Years - Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

Tonight, I wanted to reserve our time for the emotional anniversary of a horrible event the touched the entire country and triggered the passion of the civil rights movement.

Victims of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing on Sept. 15, 1963: Denise McNair, 11; Carole Robertson, 14; Addie Mae Collins, 14;  and Cynthia Wesley, 14. (Credit: AP Photo)
VICTIMS OF THE SIXTEENTH STREET BAPTIST CHURCH BOMBING ON SEPT. 15, 1963: DENISE MCNAIR, 11; CAROLE ROBERTSON, 14; ADDIE MAE COLLINS, 14; AND CYNTHIA WESLEY, 14. (CREDIT: AP PHOTO)

Friday, September 15th is the 60th anniversary of the bombing at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama that took the lives of four young girls. The girls were in the Church’s downstairs ladies’ room at 10:22 a.m., getting ready for services, when the bomb went off.

a brick church

FBI investigation at the time determined that the bomb was planted by four men who belonged to a violent splinter group of the Ku Klux Klan. But the investigation was closed in 1968 with no indictments. At the time, the assessment was that evidence was lacking because witnesses were reluctant to come forward. However, an FBI memo written for then Director J. Edgar Hoover identified the men responsible as Thomas Blanton, Robert Chambliss, Bobby Frank Cherry, and Herman Cash. This morning at 10:22 a.m., churches across Birmingham’s Southside will ring their bells. The city’s synagogues will blow their shofars. There will be a moment of remembrance.

We have obviously not learned the lessons of that history. Today, acts of domestic terrorism committed by white supremacists are not uncommon in our country. Racially motivated shootings, like the one in a Buffalo, New York grocery store in May of 2022 or the 2018 attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue leave Americans dead in growing numbers. Government statistics show that only eight states in the United States were spared from at least one incident of domestic terrorism between 2010 and 2021.

It wasn’t until 14 years after the bombing, that Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley successfully prosecuted the first of the bombers, Robert Edward Chambliss. Baxley got the conviction using circumstantial evidence.

But the remaining bombers remained free. One died before Bill Clinton’s appointee to be U.S. Attorney in Birmingham, a young lawyer named Doug Jones, decided to hold the two who remained alive accountable. His team went back to the beginning, reviewed all of the evidence, and found some critically important information-including tapes-that hadn’t been available to Attorney General Baxley. Jones successfully prosecuted Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., convicted in 2001; and Bobby Frank Cherry, convicted in 2002.

Future Alabama Senator Doug Jones, fourth from the left, assembled a team of agents and prosecutors, both state and federal, who put together the evidence that turned the cold case into a successful prosecution.

The bombing happened on September 15, 1963. Convictions, when they finally came, were most assuredly justice delayed. But justice was not denied. Justice was ultimately delivered.

In some cases, justice is a long time coming. It should not be, but it is. The delay does not make it any less important, when it finally is done. Justice moves our communities and our country forward. On Friday in Birmingham, the first Black woman to become a Supreme Court Justice, Ketanji Jackson Brown, will speak to people in the Church who will assemble to mark the moment. That too will be justice.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Sixteenth Street is a beautiful church. The music of the choirs that sing in the church pierce your soul and the words of Pastor Arthur Price are strong and true. There is always a moment as you enter the Church, no matter the reason, when you remember the young girls who died there and are forced to promise yourself that we can do better, that we have to do better. We cannot give into hate and racism. We cannot let those dark days return.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

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