But I’m not responsible for it.”Ī 1993 meeting in Birmingham between FBI officials and black ministers led to the re-opening of the bombing case against Blanton and Cherry. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville, Alabama. and that’s why I’m here,” Blanton told the television station from St. “I think I was cleverly set up by the government. In a 2006 interview with Birmingham station WBRC-TV, he claimed the government used trumped-up evidence and lies to gain his conviction. senator, said in the trial.īlanton proclaimed his innocence years after being sent to prison. “Tom Blanton saw change and didn’t like it,” Jones, now a Democratic U.S. The targeted church was a rallying point for protesters. Attorney Doug Jones, appointed as a special state prosecutor, said Blanton acted in response to months of civil rights demonstrations. “We were getting ready to be there to oppose it,” said Rudolph's husband, George Rudolph.ĭuring the trial, then-U.S. Glass fragments remained in her chest, left eye and abdomen for decades after the explosion.Ī parole hearing was scheduled next year for Blanton.
The bodies of Denise McNair, 11, and Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson, all 14, were found in the downstairs lounge.Ĭollins’ sister, Sarah Collins Rudolph, survived the blast but lost her right eye. 15, 1963, a bomb ripped through an exterior wall of the brick church, killing four girls who were inside preparing for a youth program. Cherry was convicted in 2002 and died in prison in 2004. Chambliss was convicted in 1977 and died in prison in 1985. The investigation into the bombing was stalled early and left dormant for long stretches, but two other ex-Klansmen, Robert Chambliss and Bobby Frank Cherry, also were convicted in the bombing in separate trials. Moderates could no longer remain silent and the fight to topple segregation laws gained new momentum. The church bombing, exposing the depths of hatred by white supremacists as Birmingham integrated its public schools, was a tipping point of the civil rights movement. Kay Ivey's office said Blanton died of natural causes. Their deaths inside a church on a Sunday morning became a symbol worldwide of the depth of racial hatred in the segregated South.Gov. The girls, who were inside the church preparing for worship, died instantly in a hail of bricks and stone that seriously injured Collins’ sister, Sarah Collins Rudolph.
The blast killed 11-year-old McNair and 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Morris, also known as Cynthia Wesley. He is held in a one-person cell at a maximum-security prison and rarely has contact with other inmates, corrections officials say.īlanton was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2001 for being part of a group of Klansmen who planted a dynamite bomb that exploded outside the church on Sept. “Justice is served,” Lisa McNair, sister of bombing victim Denise McNair, said afterward.īlanton is the last surviving KKK member convicted of murder in the bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church. Relatives of three of the slain girls spoke against Blanton’s release during the hearing. The decision to keep Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., 78, imprisoned was met with applause. MONTGOMERY, ALA.-Alabama’s parole board decided Wednesday against freeing a one-time Ku Klux Klansman convicted in a church bombing that killed four black girls more than 50 years ago.
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