September 15, 1963 Home Grown Terrorism that Changed the Civil Rights Movement #BeadsOnAString #history

Today, September 15th is the anniversary of one of the most disgraceful and cowardly acts of hatred in America's history. In 1963 the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church of Birmingham,  Alabama which resulted in destroying the lounge where five little girls were standing. Causing the injury to 15 or more members of the congregation and  death of four of the little girls, leaving 11 year old Sarah Collins Rudolph the lone survivor. Please click over and share your condolences on the loss of her sister Addie Collins.

Martin Luther King and other Civil Rights activists blamed George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama, for the killings. Only a week before the bombing he had told the New York Times that to stop integration Alabama needed a "few first-class funerals."
Dr. King wired Wallace that "the blood of four little children ... is on your hands. Your irresponsible and misguided actions have created in Birmingham and Alabama the atmosphere that has induced continued violence and now murder." Source

It took the children of Birmingham"Bombingham" to show the need for change in the way Black Americans were viewed and treated.  They would take no more.

It took hatred and an act of callous terrorism by Americans on American soil prove the need was dire and immediate.

A witness identified Robert Chambliss, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, as the man who placed the bomb under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. He was arrested and charged with murder and possessing a box of 122 sticks of dynamite without a permit. On 8th October, 1963, Chambliss was found not guilty of murder and received a hundred-dollar fine and a six-month jail sentence for having the dynamite.

The case was unsolved until Bill Baxley was elected attorney general of Alabama. He requested the original Federal Bureau of Investigation files on the case and discovered that the organization had accumulated a great deal of evidence against Chambliss that had not been used in the original trial.

In November, 1977 Chambliss was tried once again for the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. Now aged 73, Chambliss was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Chambliss died in an Alabama prison on 29th October, 1985.

On 17th May, 2000, the FBI announced that the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing had been carried out by the Ku Klux Klan splinter group, the Cahaba Boys. It was claimed that four men, Robert Chambliss, Herman Cash, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry had been responsible for the crime. Cash was dead but Blanton and Cherry were arrested and Blanton has since been tried and convicted.

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