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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello, Hello, everyone, Welcome to This Day in

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Speaker 1: History Class, where we bring you a new tidbit from

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Speaker 1: history every day. Today is September nineteen. The day was

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Speaker 1: September nineteen sixty three. Members of the Ku Klux Klan

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Speaker 1: planted bombs in the sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama,

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Speaker 1: killing four girls and injuring many other people. Birmingham was

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Speaker 1: an important site of protests and organizing during the Civil

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Speaker 1: Rights movement. Launched in nineteen sixty three. The Birmingham Campaign

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Speaker 1: was a movement of protests against segregation laws in the city.

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Speaker 1: It was home to Bethel Baptist Church, which was the

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Speaker 1: headquarters of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and

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Speaker 1: where activists Fred Shuttlesworth served as pastor for several years.

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Speaker 1: And Birmingham was the site of the Children's Crusade in

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Speaker 1: May of nineteen sixty three, when students marched to protests

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Speaker 1: segregation and were met with blasts from water hoses, attacks

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Speaker 1: by police dogs, arrests, and meetings by police officers. The

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Speaker 1: students involved in the Children's Crusade gathered at the sixteenth

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Speaker 1: Street Baptist Church and marched downtown. The sixteenth Street Baptist

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Speaker 1: Church specifically was a place where civil rights activists met

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Speaker 1: and organized in Birmingham. People like Southern Christian Leadership Conference

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Speaker 1: leader James Bebel and Martin Luther King Jr. Spoke at

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Speaker 1: the church, but on September nineteen sixty three it was

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Speaker 1: a site of terrorism. That day, the church held Sunday

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Speaker 1: services as usual, but around ten a m. Caroline Mall,

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Speaker 1: who was acting as Sunday school secretary, picked up a

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Speaker 1: phone call. The caller only said three minutes and hung up.

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Speaker 1: Just after Caroline hung up the phone, a bomb exploded

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Speaker 1: in the church. Three of the girls that were killed,

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Speaker 1: Addie Maycollins, Denise McNair, and Carol Robertson, were fourteen years old.

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Speaker 1: Cynthia Wesley was eleven years old when she was killed

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Speaker 1: in the church bombing. Sarah Collins, Addie May's sister, was

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Speaker 1: blinded in one eye because of the blast. The bomb

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Speaker 1: had been planted beneath steps on the east side of

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Speaker 1: the church, and the girls who died were in the

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Speaker 1: basement at the time of the explosion. More than twenty

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Speaker 1: people were injured in the blast. There had been other

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Speaker 1: bombings in Birmingham. In nineteen sixty three, in retaliation to

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Speaker 1: disegregation measures being passed, the Gaston Motel, where Doctor King

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Speaker 1: had been staying but left, was bombed. The house of A. D. King,

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Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Junior's brother, was also bombed in double

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Speaker 1: a CP attorney Arthur Shore's house was firebombed. Segregationist reactions

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Speaker 1: to the success of the civil rights movement were often violent.

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Speaker 1: After the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing, protesters came to

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Speaker 1: the scene of the crime. Two black boys, Virgil Ware

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Speaker 1: and Johnny Robinson, were killed in the riots, and more

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Speaker 1: were injured. Alabama Governor George Wallace sent National guardsmen and

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Speaker 1: three hundred state troopers into Birmingham, and hundreds of police

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Speaker 1: officers in sheriff's deputies also showed up to police the crowds.

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Speaker 1: Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Spoke at the funeral held

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Speaker 1: for three of the girls. The FBI office in Birmingham

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Speaker 1: launched an investigation into the bombing. In a memo to

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Speaker 1: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, agents named white supremacist Thomas Blanton,

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Speaker 1: Robert Chamblis, Bobby Frank Cherry, and Herman Cash as suspects,

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Speaker 1: but by the time the investigation ended in nineteen sixty eight,

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Speaker 1: there were no indictments. The FBI said that witnesses were

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Speaker 1: reluctant to talk, that there was not enough physical evidence,

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Speaker 1: and that info gathered from FBI surveillance was not admissible

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Speaker 1: in court. The bombing, along with other tragic events that

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Speaker 1: affected people's perception of the civil rights movement, like John F.

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Speaker 1: Kennedy's assassination in the March on Washington, inspired support for

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Speaker 1: and the passage of civil rights legislation in the following years.

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Speaker 1: Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley later reopened the case, and

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Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy seven, Robert Chamblis was convicted of first

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Speaker 1: degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Lantern and

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Speaker 1: Terry were sentenced to four life terms in two thousand

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Speaker 1: one and two thousand two, respectively. Cash died in nineteen

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Speaker 1: ninety four before he was charged. FBI informant Gary Thomas Road, Jr.

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Speaker 1: Was also suspected of being involved in the bombing, but

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Speaker 1: he was cleared of involvement. It's been claimed that Hoover

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Speaker 1: ordered FBI agents not to disclose evidence against the bombers

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Speaker 1: too County prosecutors to prevent justice from being served, but

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Speaker 1: the FBI said his concern was to prevent leaks and

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Speaker 1: that he did not think a conviction could be one

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Speaker 1: on circumstantial evidence. The FBI did acknowledge that it did

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Speaker 1: not give secretly recorded tapes and other evidence to Alabama

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Speaker 1: officials when it reopened its investigation. The Sixteenth Street Baptist

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Speaker 1: Church is now a National Historic Landmark. I'm Eve Steff

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Speaker 1: Coote and hopefully you know a little more about history

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Speaker 1: today than you did yesterday. We love it if you

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Speaker 1: left us a comment on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. At

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Speaker 1: t d i h C podcast, thank you for joining

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Speaker 1: me today. See you same place, same time tomorrow. M

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Speaker 1: h m hmmmm. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,

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