BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. was a young Ku Klux Klansman with a reputation for hating blacks in 1963, when a bomb ripped a hole in the side of 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four black girls during
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. was a young Ku Klux Klansman with a reputation for hating blacks in 1963, when a bomb ripped a hole in the side of 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four black girls during the civil rights movement.
Today, Blanton is old and imprisoned, the last survivor among three one-time KKK members convicted of murder in the bombing. Soon, Alabama’s parole board will decide whether Blanton deserves to be free after serving 15 years of a life term for murder.
The board has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday to consider parole for the 78-year-old Blanton.
Inmates are not allowed to attend parole hearings in Alabama, but opponents of Blanton’s release are expected to address the three-person board when it meets in Montgomery.
The president of the Alabama NAACP, Bernard Simelton, said releasing Blanton at a time when protests are occurring nationwide over police killings of black people would send a horrible message. NAACP chapters statewide are sending letters in opposition to Blanton’s release, and the Birmingham chapter is sending a busload of people to oppose parole, he said.
“It would be a slap in the face to those young ladies and their families to release him,” Simelton said.
Blanton was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2001 for being part of a group of Klansmen who planted a dynamite bomb that exploded outside 16th Street Baptist on Sept. 15, 1963.
The blast killed 11-year-old Denise McNair and 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Morris, also known as Cynthia Wesley.
The girls, who
were inside the church preparing for worship, died instantly in a
hail of bricks and
stone that seriously injured Collins’
sister, Sarah Collins Rudolph.
Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney who prosecuted Blanton on the state charge, said Blanton shouldn’t be released since he has never accepted responsibility for the bombing or expressed any remorse for a crime that was aimed at maintaining racial separation.
