16th Street Baptist Church Bombing - September 15, 1963

On this day in 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, was bombed in an act of terrorism by white supremacists.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello, Hello, everyone, Welcome to This Day in
History Class, where we bring you a new tidbit from
history every day. Today is September nineteen. The day was

(00:24):
September nineteen sixty three. Members of the Ku Klux Klan
planted bombs in the sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama,
killing four girls and injuring many other people. Birmingham was
an important site of protests and organizing during the Civil
Rights movement. Launched in nineteen sixty three. The Birmingham Campaign

(00:48):
was a movement of protests against segregation laws in the city.
It was home to Bethel Baptist Church, which was the
headquarters of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and
where activists Fred Shuttlesworth served as pastor for several years.
And Birmingham was the site of the Children's Crusade in

(01:09):
May of nineteen sixty three, when students marched to protests
segregation and were met with blasts from water hoses, attacks
by police dogs, arrests, and meetings by police officers. The
students involved in the Children's Crusade gathered at the sixteenth
Street Baptist Church and marched downtown. The sixteenth Street Baptist

(01:31):
Church specifically was a place where civil rights activists met
and organized in Birmingham. People like Southern Christian Leadership Conference
leader James Bebel and Martin Luther King Jr. Spoke at
the church, but on September nineteen sixty three it was
a site of terrorism. That day, the church held Sunday

(01:53):
services as usual, but around ten a m. Caroline Mall,
who was acting as Sunday school secretary, picked up a
phone call. The caller only said three minutes and hung up.
Just after Caroline hung up the phone, a bomb exploded
in the church. Three of the girls that were killed,

(02:14):
Addie Maycollins, Denise McNair, and Carol Robertson, were fourteen years old.
Cynthia Wesley was eleven years old when she was killed
in the church bombing. Sarah Collins, Addie May's sister, was
blinded in one eye because of the blast. The bomb
had been planted beneath steps on the east side of

(02:35):
the church, and the girls who died were in the
basement at the time of the explosion. More than twenty
people were injured in the blast. There had been other
bombings in Birmingham. In nineteen sixty three, in retaliation to
disegregation measures being passed, the Gaston Motel, where Doctor King
had been staying but left, was bombed. The house of A. D. King,

(02:59):
Martin Luther King Junior's brother, was also bombed in double
a CP attorney Arthur Shore's house was firebombed. Segregationist reactions
to the success of the civil rights movement were often violent.
After the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing, protesters came to
the scene of the crime. Two black boys, Virgil Ware

(03:20):
and Johnny Robinson, were killed in the riots, and more
were injured. Alabama Governor George Wallace sent National guardsmen and
three hundred state troopers into Birmingham, and hundreds of police
officers in sheriff's deputies also showed up to police the crowds.
Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Spoke at the funeral held

(03:41):
for three of the girls. The FBI office in Birmingham
launched an investigation into the bombing. In a memo to
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, agents named white supremacist Thomas Blanton,
Robert Chamblis, Bobby Frank Cherry, and Herman Cash as suspects,
but by the time the investigation ended in nineteen sixty eight,

(04:03):
there were no indictments. The FBI said that witnesses were
reluctant to talk, that there was not enough physical evidence,
and that info gathered from FBI surveillance was not admissible
in court. The bombing, along with other tragic events that
affected people's perception of the civil rights movement, like John F.
Kennedy's assassination in the March on Washington, inspired support for

(04:27):
and the passage of civil rights legislation in the following years.
Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley later reopened the case, and
in nineteen seventy seven, Robert Chamblis was convicted of first
degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Lantern and
Terry were sentenced to four life terms in two thousand

(04:48):
one and two thousand two, respectively. Cash died in nineteen
ninety four before he was charged. FBI informant Gary Thomas Road, Jr.
Was also suspected of being involved in the bombing, but
he was cleared of involvement. It's been claimed that Hoover
ordered FBI agents not to disclose evidence against the bombers

(05:09):
too County prosecutors to prevent justice from being served, but
the FBI said his concern was to prevent leaks and
that he did not think a conviction could be one
on circumstantial evidence. The FBI did acknowledge that it did
not give secretly recorded tapes and other evidence to Alabama
officials when it reopened its investigation. The Sixteenth Street Baptist

(05:34):
Church is now a National Historic Landmark. I'm Eve Steff
Coote and hopefully you know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday. We love it if you
left us a comment on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. At
t d i h C podcast, thank you for joining

(05:55):
me today. See you same place, same time tomorrow. M
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