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mahatmakanejeeves

(66,704 posts)
Tue Sep 16, 2025, 01:41 PM Tuesday

On September 15, 1963, a bomb went off in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.

16th Street Baptist Church bombing



The four girls killed in the bombing (clockwise
from top left): Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley,
Carole Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair

Location: Birmingham, Alabama
Coordinates: 33°31'0"N 86°48'54"W
Date: September 15, 1963; 59 years ago; 10:22 a.m. (UTC-5)

The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was a white supremacist terrorist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sunday, September 15, 1963. Four members of a local Ku Klux Klan chapter planted 19 sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device beneath the steps located on the east side of the church.

Described by Martin Luther King Jr. as "one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity", the explosion at the church killed four girls and injured between 14 and 22 other people.

Although the FBI had concluded in 1965 that the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing had been committed by four known Klansmen and segregationists: Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., Herman Frank Cash, Robert Edward Chambliss, and Bobby Frank Cherry, no prosecutions were conducted until 1977, when Robert Chambliss was tried and convicted of the first-degree murder of one of the victims, 11-year-old Carol Denise McNair.

As part of a revival of effort by states and the federal government to prosecute cold cases from the civil rights era, the state conducted trials in the early 21st century of Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. and Bobby Cherry, who were each convicted of four counts of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2001 and 2002, respectively. Future United States Senator Doug Jones successfully prosecuted Blanton and Cherry. Herman Cash had died in 1994, and was never charged with his alleged involvement in the bombing.

{snip}

NBCBLK

The two forgotten Black boys who died the day of the Birmingham church bombing

Johnny Robinson and Virgil Ware were killed in the aftermath of the Birmingham church bombing in 1963.


Donnell Jackson, 13, and Shirley Floyd hold up a portrait of Virgil Ware as members of Ware's family stand behind it at a memorial ceremony for Ware in Birmingham, Ala., in 2004.Tamika Moore / The Birmingham News via AP file

Sept. 15, 2023, 6:00 AM EDT
By Char Adams

Johnny Robinson and Virgil Ware.

Outside of Birmingham, Alabama, those names have gone largely forgotten in the decades since Robinson and Ware died on Sept. 15, 1963, the day four Black girls were killed in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing.

They died in the erupting chaos after the Ku Klux Klan bombed the church that morning in an attack that killed 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carol Robertson and 11-year-old Denise McNair. In the uprising that followed, a white police officer killed Robinson and a white teenager killed Ware.

“For so long, the four little girls got all the recognition, and they forgot about the two little boys,” James Ware, Virgil’s older brother, told The Birmingham News in 2013.

Aside from the four girls, Robinson, 16, and Ware, 13, were the only two people to die in the aftermath of the attack that day. Robinson was with his friends when a group of white people drove by waving Confederate flags, throwing garbage and hurling racist slurs at the Black group, according to NPR. Witnesses said then that a police car arrived after Robinson and his friends were seen throwing rocks at a car draped in a Confederate flag.

“The crowd was running away and Mr. Robinson had his back [turned] as he was running away,” FBI agent Dana Gillis told NPR in 2010. “And the shot hit him in the back.”

Gillis, now retired from the FBI, told NBC News via email that he was tasked with delivering a letter to the Robinson family in 2010 with more information about Robinson’s case and what actually happened that day. Consumed by grief, the Robinsons didn’t talk much about the teen’s death, especially after local and federal grand juries decided not to prosecute Jack Parker, the officer who killed him, NPR reported. Parker died in 1977.

{snip}

Sun Sep 15, 2024: On this day, September 15, 1963, a bomb went off in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.

Fri Sep 15, 2023: On this day, September 15, 1963, a bomb went off in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.

Thu Sep 15, 2022: On this day, September 15, 1963, a bomb went off in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.

Wed Sep 15, 2021: On this day, September 15, 1963, a bomb went off in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.
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On September 15, 1963, a bomb went off in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. (Original Post) mahatmakanejeeves Tuesday OP
And how long it took to bring the culprits to justice ... marble falls Tuesday #1

marble falls

(68,522 posts)
1. And how long it took to bring the culprits to justice ...
Tue Sep 16, 2025, 03:57 PM
Tuesday

... and how some skated free:

The 1965 investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation determined the bombing had been committed by four known KKK members and segregationists: Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., Herman Frank Cash, Robert Edward Chambliss, and Bobby Frank Cherry.[6] However, it was not until 1977 that the first suspect, Robert Chambliss, was prosecuted by Attorney General of Alabama William "Bill" Baxley and convicted of the first degree murder of one of the victims, 11-year-old Carol Denise McNair.

As part of an effort by state and federal prosecutors to reopen and try cold cases involving murder and domestic terrorism from the civil rights era, the state of Alabama placed both Blanton Jr. and Cherry on trial, who were each convicted of four counts of first degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2001 and 2002, respectively. Future United States Senator Doug Jones successfully prosecuted Blanton and Cherry.[7] Herman Cash died in 1994, and was never charged with his alleged involvement in the bombing.

19 sticks of dynamite (some say)

In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, several members of the United Klans of America—Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., Robert Edward Chambliss, Bobby Frank Cherry, and, allegedly, Herman Frank Cash[18]—planted a minimum of 15 sticks[19] of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the church, close to the basement. At approximately 10:22 a.m., an anonymous man phoned the 16th Street Baptist Church. The call was answered by the acting Sunday School secretary, a 15-year-old girl named Carolyn Maull.[20] The anonymous caller simply said the words, "Three minutes"[21]: 10  to Maull before terminating the call. Less than one minute later, the bomb exploded. Five children were in the basement at the time of the explosion,[22] in a restroom close to the stairwell, changing into choir robes[23] in preparation for a sermon entitled "A Rock That Will Not Roll".[24] According to one survivor, the explosion shook the entire building and propelled the girls' bodies through the air "like rag dolls".[25]

The explosion blew a hole measuring seven feet (2.1 m) in diameter in the church's rear wall,[26] and a crater five feet (1.5 m) wide and two feet (0.61 m) deep in the ladies' basement lounge, destroying the rear steps to the church and blowing a passing motorist out of his car.[27] Several other cars parked near the site of the blast were destroyed, and windows of properties located more than two blocks from the church were also damaged. All but one of the church's stained-glass windows were destroyed in the explosion. The sole stained-glass window largely undamaged in the explosion depicted Christ leading a group of young children.[14]

Hundreds of individuals, some of them lightly wounded, converged on the church to search the debris for survivors as police erected barricades around the church and several outraged men scuffled with police. An estimated 2,000 black people converged on the scene in the hours following the explosion. The church's pastor, the Reverend John Cross Jr., attempted to placate the crowd by loudly reciting the 23rd Psalm through a bullhorn.[28]
Casualties

Four girls—Addie Mae Collins (age 14, born April 18, 1949), Carol Denise McNair (age 11, born November 17, 1951), Carole Rosamond Robertson (age 14, born April 24, 1949), and Cynthia Dionne Wesley (age 14, born April 30, 1949)—were killed in the attack.[29] The explosion was so intense that one of the girls' bodies was decapitated and so badly mutilated that her body could be identified only through her clothing and a ring.[30] Another victim was killed by a piece of mortar embedded in her skull.[31] The pastor of the church, the Reverend John Cross, recollected in 2001 that the girls' bodies were found "stacked on top of each other, clung together".[32] All four girls were pronounced dead on arrival at the Hillman Emergency Clinic.[33]

Between 14 and 22 additional people were injured in the explosion,[34][35] one of whom was Addie Mae's younger sister, 12-year-old Sarah Collins.[36] She had 21 pieces of glass embedded in her face and was blinded in one eye.[37] In her later recollections of the bombing, Collins would recall that in the moments immediately before the explosion, she had watched her sister, Addie, tying her dress sash.[38] Another sister of Addie Mae Collins, 16-year-old Junie Collins, would later recall that shortly before the explosion, she had been sitting in the basement of the church reading the Bible and had observed Addie Mae Collins tying the dress sash of Carol Denise McNair before she returned upstairs to the ground floor of the church.[39]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16th_Street_Baptist_Church_bombing

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