Thomas Blanton’s meeting for the 1963 church bombing that killed four Black girls

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. sent a telegram to Governor George Wallace to say: “The blood of our little children is on your hands.” Dr. King also sent a telegram to President John F. Kennedy, expressing outrage, promising “TO PLEAD WITH MY PEOPLE TO REMAIN NON VIOLENT.” Dr. King feared unless there was quick response by the federal government, “WE SHALL SEE THE WORST RACIAL HOLOCAUST THIS NATION HAS EVER SEEN,” according to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.

All four suspects of the 1963 church bombing were devout white supremacists— Thomas Blanton, Robert Chambliss, Bobby Frank Cherry, and Herman Cash. After years of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover blocking prosecutions and arrests the case was reopened. In 1977, Chambliss was convicted of murder in the death of one of the girls, Denise McNair. He was sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 1985 at age 81. In 1993, the case was reopened leading to the arrests of Blanton and Cherry. (Cash, the fourth suspect, died in 1994 without being charged.)

Back on June 28, 1964, the FBI recorded Blanton telling his wife about making a bomb. In a packed courtroom in 2001, the jury heard the 37-year-old surveillance tape of Blanton telling his then-wife, Jeanne Blanton, that he had planned the bombing under a bridge at the Cahaba River, where the Klan’s violent cell met. “You have to have a meeting to make a bomb,” Blanton said. Blanton was convicted in 2001. Cherry was convicted a year later, in 2002. A judge had initially ruled that Cherry was not mentally competent to stand trial but reversed himself after doctors concluded that Cherry was faking a mental illness. Cherry's granddaughter testified that Cherry once said, “He helped blow up a bunch of n!ggers back in Birmingham.” One of Cherry’s ex-wives also testified against him saying: “He bragged about it. Bob told me he didn’t put the bomb together. He said, ‘I lit it.' Cherry died in prison in 2004. He was 74.

In August 2016, an Alabama parole board refused an early release for Blanton, who had been sentenced to life in prison. Ku Klux Klansman/Alabama inmate Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., has lived a long life to age 81. He is the last to die, this past Friday in prison, of the white racist mob to bomb and kill four young Black girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church the morning of September 15, 1963.

The premeditated act murdered 11-year-old Denise McNair and 14-year-olds Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins and Cynthia Wesley, who had been in the church basement preparing for Sunday service.

Sources:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/06/26/thomas-blantons-role-1963-church-bombing-that-killed-four-black-girls/