It was the summer of 1963, only three weeks after the March on Washington. Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders of the civil rights movement were still elated from that great day when 250,000 people came to Washington, DC in support of equal rights for Black Americans. On the morning of September 15, a Sunday Morning, Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins and Carole Robertson went to Sunday school and never came home again. They were the four who were killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL. That horrible action turned the joy of the March into untold sadness for Dr. King and the leaders of the movement.
Now, nearly 40 years later, two more of those long suspected in the bombing and murder have been indicted for the murder of te four girls. Bobby Frank Cherry and Thomas Blanton Jr. now join the ranks of Rober Chambliss, who finally was convicted in the bombing in 1977. Both Cherry and Blanton were suspected of aiding Chambliss from the beginning, but authorities claimed that they did not have enough evidence.
But originally the case, which horrified millions of Americans, was not investigated because of polictical pressure from both George Wallace and J. Edgar Hoover, both of whom detested the civil rights movement. Blanton and Cherry's indictment comes after a four year reinvestigation conducted by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office. According to newspaper accounts, Cherry's former wife and granddaughter have come forward to say they heard him admit to helping in the bombing. Testimony at the Chambliss trial 20 year ago placed Blanton's car at the scene of the crime, but now it seems authorities are ready to press forward.
Stories of Blanton's life in the 37 years since the bombing paint a picture of an angry man who has held a series of security guard jobs and lived in a tiny trailer. He blamed his job loss on the publicity of the case and blamed civil rights leaders for keeping him from passing the Alabama bar exam after he graduated from and unaccredited law school. The son of one of Alabama's most notorious racists, Blanton was a member of the Eastview Klavern No. 13 of the Klu Klux Klan, along with Cherry and Chambliss. His car, Confederate flag flying on the antenna, was probably used to carry the bombers to the church.
Cherry, who moved to Texas in the 1970's, when the bombing case was first reopened, is reported to have been married five times and to have 15 children, he has seemed unrepentant through the years.
The bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church may seem like ancient history to some, but it is very real to parents of the four little girls. It is very real to all who were in the church that Sunday morning. It is very real to those African Americans who lived in the city called "Bombingham" throughout the 1950s and 1960s. It is one of the most horrible cases in the horrid annals of racism in which hundreds of civil rights workers and southern blacks who dared to try to vote or to stand up for their rights were killed; thousands of black men, women and children were lynched; tens of thousands died in slavery and millions of Africans and African Americans suffered untold hardships.
No matter how old, no matter how ill, these two men, if found guilty, should spend the rest of their days in prison. And they should have to look at pictures of those four innocent little girls every one of those days. Only then can we close the chapter of that terrible book.