Cold Open

It’s the morning of September 15th, 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama, at the height of the city’s civil rights movement.

Secretary Mabel Shorter shuts her eyes in frustration as a phone starts to ring inside the main office of a Black Baptist church.

All morning the phone has been ringing periodically. But each time Mabel answers, no one says anything on the other end. This time is no different.

As Mabel lifts the receiver, she’s met again with silence. She shakes her head in exasperation and slams the phone back down. Mabel doesn’t understand what to make of this caller’s odd behavior. She can’t tell if it’s a prank caller, or something worse.

Because for weeks, the church has been receiving bomb threats from local members of the Ku Klux Klan. So far, their words have proved empty, and there have been no attacks. But Mabel worries that this morning’s call could be intended as another ominous, but silent threat.

With a sigh, she gets up from her desk, paces for a moment, then slumps up against a nearby wall, anticipating the phone’s next ring. But it doesn’t come. Minutes pass and there are no calls. Mabel’s face splits into a soft smile. Because perhaps it is just a prank caller, and whatever nuisance has been tormenting her all morning is finally done with their game.

Mabel happily walks back to her desk, relieved to be able to finally handle the work that this morning’s constant phone calls forced her to neglect. And with Sunday service about to begin, Mabel’s ears fill with the chatter and laughter coming from the church’s other two floors. But she savors the merciful absence of any shrill phone ringing.

Mabel gets to work drawing up the Sunday school rosters.

But before she can make any headway, a loud thud sounds through the church, followed by an enormous blast. Force of the explosion sends the walls caving in around Mabel and brings the church to the ground.

The bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church will send shockwaves across the city and the nation. The explosive, placed beneath the church’s steps, will destroy the building, injure over 20 of its occupants, and kill the four young girls playing in its basement lounge. The tragedy will become one of the most heinous crimes of the civil rights movement and will launch a long hunt for its perpetrators. Though it will be immediately clear to authorities that the Ku Klux Klan is behind the incident, it will take decades before its suspected culprits are tried and convicted, and the case is finally brought to a close on May 22nd, 2002.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is May 22nd, 2002: The Final Conviction in Birmingham’s Baptist Church Bombing.

Act One: An Investigation Ends

It’s 2:10 AM on September 15th, 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama, less than a block away from the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

Kirthus Glenn yawns as she turns onto Seventh Avenue North, between Fifteenth and Sixteenth Streets. She’s not usually up this late, but a friend needed a ride to the city’s West End, and Kirthus offered to help. She is relieved as she approaches home, tired and ready for bed. But a smudge of light in front of the nearby funeral chapel jolts her awake.

Outside the chapel is a parked car whose interior light illuminates its three white, male passengers. As Kirthus pulls up to her apartment a few doors down, she cranes her neck to try to identify the men. But as soon as she parks, the mysterious car speeds off. As it races down the road, Kirthus gets a better look at the vehicle. A turquoise Chevrolet sedan, maybe a 1955 or 1956 model.

Kirthus makes a mental note of these specifications, along with the car’s license plate number. It’s weird for anyone to be out idling this late. But it’s especially odd for a group of white men to be hanging around what’s considered the Black side of town. As she enters her home, Kirthus scrambles to retrieve a pen and record the car’s description and plate number.

She places the note next to her phone, and for a moment, Kirthus considers reporting this suspicious activity to the police. But she decides against it. What she saw was strange, but there’s also a chance nothing nefarious was going on. She herself was out driving late, and Kirthus doesn’t have any hard evidence that the men in the car were up to something sinister; and, even if she did, Birmingham’s police have a history of turning a blind eye to any crimes and violence against the city’s Black community.

So, Kirthus decides not to call it in. Instead, she heads back outside and sits on her porch, hoping that the car will pass by again and she’ll be able to gather more information about the passengers and their activities. But the car never reappears and Kirthus goes to bed with questions still swirling in her mind.

She doesn’t know it yet, but Kirthus has just witnessed the making of what will be considered one of the civil rights era’s most horrific crimes. The car she spotted belongs to 25-year-old local Ku Klux Klan member Tommy Blanton. Inside the car were other Klansmen, all in cahoots to bomb the nearby Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Investigators will later suspect that the car waited at the funeral chapel while one of the men planted the bomb under the cover of darkness. Less than 9 hours after Kirthus spots the Klansmen in their car, their explosive device destroys the church, killing 4 young Black girls and horrifying the nation.

Two weeks after the bombing, Kirthus’s account of the Chevy sedan she saw on the morning of the attack leads investigators to the vehicle’s owner, Tommy Blanton. From there, they’re able to identify three more suspects: 35-year-old Bobby Cherry, 45-year-old Herman Cash, and 58-year-old Robert E. Chambliss.

The men’s suspected involvement in the bombing is unsurprising to much of their community. They make no secret of their hatred for Black people, nor their association with the Klan. All four men are part of Birmingham’s Cahaba Boys — a KKK splinter group founded by renegade members who believed the Klan was not radical enough and had grown too restrained in the civil rights era. Together, the Cahaba Boys have terrorized Birmingham’s Black residents with brutal beatings and enough bombings to earn Robert Chambliss the nickname “Dynamite Bob.”

But with their ties to local politicians and law enforcement, most of the group’s acts of violence have only been half-heartedly investigated and the Klansmen have gone largely unpunished. But this time is different; the church bombing has attracted the eyes of the whole country, becoming a top priority for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and bringing more than fifty of its agents to Birmingham.

For the next two years, an extensive investigation is underway. But FBI agents struggle to recover physical evidence from the crime scene and have to contend with the Klan’s refusal to cooperate. Still, by 1965, they have enough evidence against the four Klansmen to name Cherry, Blanton, and Cash as primary suspects in the attack, and Chambliss as their ringleader.

But none of the men are convicted, or even charged. Reluctant to try the case before a Southern white jury with only circumstantial evidence, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover refuses to pursue it and forbids his field agents from meeting with federal and state prosecutors. 1968, the FBI closes their investigation and seals all files related to it.

After being shelved for years, the case will almost be forgotten. But a young and enterprising attorney will make it his mission to resurrect it. And almost 15 years after the attack, one of the culprits behind the bombing will finally be forced to answer for his crimes.

Act Two: An Investigation Begins

It’s November 17th, 1977 in Birmingham, Alabama.

William Baxley strides into the Jefferson County Courthouse, eager to deliver his closing argument in the prosecution of Klansman and suspected ringleader of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing, Robert E. Chambliss.

Baxley has been waiting for this day for a long time. Seven years ago, at the age of 28, the lawyer shocked Alabama by defeating the state’s incumbent Attorney General and becoming the youngest person to ever hold the position. Early into his tenure, the bright-eyed attorney reopened the investigation into the church bombing. Though it had been years since the attack and the case had long been dormant, the incident weighed heavy on Baxley’s mind.

On the day of the bombing in 1963, Baxley was 60 miles away at his fraternity house at the University of Alabama. The white law student had long been repelled by his state’s racial violence, but this tragedy shook him to his core. When Baxley heard the news of the bombing’s four young casualties, he pledged himself to address the days and justices whenever he gained enough power to make change.

When he became Attorney General, Baxley took the names of the bombing’s four victims — Denise, Carole, Cynthia, and Addie — and etched them on the corners of a small telephone calling card as a daily reminder of this vow, and of the families still in need of justice. Though the FBI has refused to cooperate, keeping their files on the bombing sealed, Baxley promptly started his own seven-year investigation into the attack — and it’s finally bearing fruit.

In September, Robert Chambliss became the first of four suspects to be indicted in the case. Three days ago, his trial began, featuring bombshell testimonies from Chambliss’s own family members. The most damaging came yesterday, from his niece, Elizabeth. According to her, Chambliss was vocal about his role in the bombing. On the eve of the tragedy, she alleged that her uncle said that he had enough dynamite to flatten half of Birmingham, and by the next morning, the city’s Black residents would be begging “to let them segregate.”

Now, with the trial nearing its end, Baxley urges the jury to issue a guilty verdict. Today would have been bombing victim Denise McNair’s twenty-sixth birthday. The Attorney General implores the jurors to give Denise a birthday present and finally put one of her murderers behind bars. After seven hours of deliberation, they oblige, returning the following day with a guilty verdict.

With Chambliss sentenced to life in prison, Baxley turns his attention to the ringleader’s suspected co-conspirators. The same day the jury finds Chambliss guilty, Baxley subpoenas Tommy Blanton. For years, Blanton has been tightlipped about the church bombing, maintained his innocence, but Baxley hopes that Chambliss’s conviction will instill enough fear to get Blanton talking, but he refuses.

Baxley has no better luck with Bobby Cherry. Shortly after Chambliss’s conviction, Baxley summons Cherry to the police station where he confronts him with an arrest warrant and investigators hammer him with questions. But Cherry gives nothing up. Prosecutors then travel to visit Chambliss in prison, trying to get him to talk about his accomplices. But this too is unsuccessful, and in 1985, Chambliss passes away without revealing his co-conspirators.

By the time of his death, however, the state’s investigation into the bombing has already come to a halt. After a failed gubernatorial campaign in 1978, Baxley loses his position, and his power to pursue the case.

For another 25 years, the case lays dormant. But in 1993, an FBI agent in the Birmingham office brings it back to life, exhuming more than 9,000 FBI documents and surveillance tapes from the agency’s original investigation. This newly unsealed evidence, coupled with witness testimonies, convinces prosecutors to pursue the matter further.

By the time the prosecution has built their case, one of the suspected conspirators, Herman Cash, has already passed away, having never faced any charges in the bombing. But two others still walk free.

In 2001, the last living suspects, Bobby Cherry, and Tommy Blanton, are charged with four counts of murder. In May of that year, Blanton is convicted and sentenced to life in prison; But Cherry manages to delay his trial a little longer. Still, the following year, the former Klansman will be forced to reckon with his past crimes. And almost four decades after the bombing that took four innocent lives, families of its victims will finally get to see the last suspected perpetrator put behind bars.

Act Three: Justice is Served

It’s May 22nd, 2002 in Birmingham, Alabama.

Inside a courtroom, the relatives of victims Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins, and Denise McNair sit in anticipation as they wait for the jury to return.

After 39 years, Bobby Cherry is on trial, charged with four counts of murder in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. For the past two weeks, the families have listened to the prosecution’s argument and watched members of Cherry's own family give evidence against him, claiming he boasted of taking part in the bombing and even confessed to lighting the fuse of the dynamite that exploded the church. Now, after six hours of deliberation, the jury is finally ready to deliver its verdict. 

Sitting beside the victims’ families are white-haired veterans of the civil rights movement, some of whom have witnessed and experienced Cherry’s past violence firsthand. As the jury returns a guilty verdict, they rejoice with tears in their eyes, grateful to finally see justice served in a crime that became a watershed in the fight against segregation. While the 71-year-old Cherry is led away in handcuffs, many of the victims’ family members openly weep with relief, seeing a just end to a tragedy that has haunted them for so long.

Cherry is sentenced to life in prison and a later attempt to appeal his conviction will fail. Both he and Tommy Blanton will die behind bars. And with the last remaining suspects convicted and incarcerated, the case of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing will finally be closed. But the tragedy will be remembered long after, its horrors sighted as a catalyst for the nation’s civil rights movement. In 2013, President Barack Obama will award a posthumous Congressional Gold Medal to the four girls killed in the attack. Though no verdicts or accolades will bring back the young lives lost in the bombing, they will give some comfort to the victim's families who will hail as a beginning of new chapter in their healing: the conviction of Bobby Cherry on May 22nd, 2002.

Outro

Next on History Daily. May 23rd, 1977. Terrorists simultaneously attack an elementary school and a train in the Netherlands, sparking a long and harrowing hostage crisis.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Mollie Baack.

Music by Lindsay Graham.

This episode is written and produced by Alexandra Currie-Buckner.

Executive Producers are Steven Walters for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.