They used it as a base for demonstrations and as a sanctuary where blacks would go for one last pep talk before braving the streets. John Cross, who testified Tuesday, and the Rev. (AP) Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., the last of three one-time Ku Klux Klansmen convicted of a 1963 Alabama church bombing that killed four black girls and was the deadliest. It was the Birmingham of Bull Connor, the police chief who unleashed dogs and fire hoses on marching kids.Īnd it was the 16th Street Baptist Church of civil rights leaders such as the Rev. Posey reminded jurors - a 16-member panel including four blacks - that this was the Alabama of George Wallace, the governor infamous for vowing: "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" Cherry faces four counts of first-degree murder. "Bobby's just an old guy, who's completely innocent and wants this to be over," his attorney, Mickey Johnson, said earlier. Cherry, now 71, swiveled around in his chair to watch. The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency has released a statement following more than a dozen bomb threats that were called in to various colleges across the state on. On Tuesday, prosecutors played a newsreel clip from 1957 that showed Cherry,Ī member of an especially violent cell of the Ku Klux Klan, taking a swing at a black minister. The South is filled with museums and somber glass cases memorializing what happened at the 16th Street Baptist Church, and Cherry's trial is like a living diorama of some of America's most turbulent days. With that, the prosecution opened the long-awaited trial Tuesday of the last remaining suspect of the deadliest crime of the civil rights era, the dynamiting of a Birmingham church on Sept.
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