Thomas Blanton, last KKK member involved in Birmingham church bombing that killed 4 girls, dies
Brian Lyman, Montgomery Advertiser, USA TODAY•June 27, 2020
Jefferson County sheriff's deputies lead Thomas E. Blanton Jr. out of the courtroom after a jury convicted him of murder in Birmingham on May 1, 2001.MONTGOMERY, Ala.
Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., convicted in 2001 of the 1963 bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed 4 girls, died on Friday. He was 82 years old.
The Alabama Department of Corrections said in a statement that Blanton died on Friday. An autopsy is planned, but DOC said “no foul play is suspected.”
Blanton was one of three men sent to prison over the September 1963 bombing, which killed Addie Mae Collins, 14; Denise McNair, 11; Carole Robertson, 14, and Cynthia Wesley, 14. The church had been used as a meeting place for civil rights activists during the 1963 Birmingham campaign. Blanton, a member of the United Klans of America, was one of four men who planted dynamite below the church on the morning of Sept. 15, 1963.
The blast killed Collins, McNair, Robertson, and Wesley and injured at least 14 other people, including Addie Mae Collins' sister Sarah, 12, who was blinded in one eye.
"That was a dark day that will never be forgotten in both Alabama’s history and that of our nation," Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement on Friday. "Although his passing will never fully take away the pain or restore the loss of life, I pray on behalf of the loved ones of all involved that our entire state can continue taking steps forward to create a better Alabama for future generations."
The FBI identified Blanton as a suspect in a 1965 memo as a suspect in the bombing. But the case was cold until 1993 when Black clergy in Birmingham met with the FBI, and the FBI reopened the case.
The prosecution, led by U.S. Attorney Doug Jones, now a U.S. senator, presented evidence from a tape recording made off an FBI tap in 1964 that included Blanton saying “They ain’t going to catch me when I bomb my next church.” A former girlfriend on Blanton's also testified that he tried to run down a Black pedestrian, saying “All I want is a chance to kill one of those Black bastards.”
Blanton's attorneys challenged the fidelity of the tape and argued he never explicitly said he bombed the church. The jury did not buy the story and convicted Blanton after two and a half hours of deliberation.
Blanton was sentenced to serve four consecutive life sentences. He was incarcerated at Donaldson Correctional Facility in Jefferson County at the time of his death, according to DOC.
Robert Chambliss, who was convicted in the bombing in 1977, died in prison in 1985. Frank Cherry, convicted the year after Blanton, died in 2004. A fourth suspect in the bombing, Herman Cash, died in 1994 without ever being charged in the case.