The city had no black police officers or firefighters and most black residents could expect to find menial employment in professions such as cooks and cleaners.
Alpha street baptist church movie#
īlack and white residents of Birmingham had access to different public amenities such as water fountains and places of public gathering such as movie theaters. described Birmingham as "probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States." Birmingham's Commissioner of Public Safety, Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor, led the effort in enforcing racial segregation in the city through the use of violent tactics. In the years leading up to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, Birmingham had earned a national reputation as a tense, violent and racially segregated city, in which even tentative racial integration in any form was met with violent resistance. The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing marked a turning point in the United States during the civil rights movement and also contributed to support for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by Congress. Herman Cash died in 1994, and was never charged with his alleged involvement in the bombing.
Future United States Senator Doug Jones successfully prosecuted Blanton and Cherry. and Cherry on trial, who were each convicted of four counts of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 20, respectively. 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.Īlthough the Federal Bureau of Investigation had concluded in 1965 that 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, no prosecutions were conducted until 1977, when Robert Chambliss was tried by Attorney General of Alabama Bill Baxley and convicted of the first-degree murder of one of the victims, 11-year-old Carol Denise McNair.Īs part of a revival effort by states and the federal government to prosecute cold cases from the civil rights era, the state placed both Blanton Jr. Four members of a local Ku Klux Klan (KKK) chapter planted 19 sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device beneath the steps located on the east side of the church. The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was a terrorist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on Septemby a white supremacist terrorist group. Tuskegee High School desegregation crisis.University of Alabama desegregation crisis.
Gaston Motel and King residence bombings.
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