Another important injustice that I hope will someday be solved is the assassination of Violo Lizzo (if I'm spelling her last name correctly). She was the Michigan white Italian housewife who with great courage went to Alabama in the early 1960's to fight for the voting rights of blacks (most who do not know this today). It is believed that she was targeted for death by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). ~ Roberto

By Kansascity (209.242.125.88) on Monday, May 14, 2001 - 08:43 pm:

Roberto and Everyone on this board: Please check out this web site!

From top: Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins and Carole Robertson

THE BIRMINGHAM BOMBING: 38 YEARS LATER

On September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded outside Birmingham, Alabama's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church just before Sunday services were scheduled to begin.

Four girls were killed -- 11-year-old Denise McNair and 14-year-olds Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins and Carole Robertson (pictured from top) -- and twenty others were injured.

The FBI concluded four members of the Ku Klux Klan were responsible for the bombing: Robert Chambliss, Bobby Frank Cherry, Herman Cash, and Thomas Blanton.

Only Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss has been brought to trial. He was convicted in 1977 after the dormant investigation was reopened.

Cash died in 1994 without ever being charged in the bombing. Cherry was recently indicted, but his trial was postponed after he was declared mentally unable to assist with his own defense.

Nearly 40 years after the crime, Thomas Blanton, Jr., stood trial and was convicted on May 1 for one of the most heinous crimes of the Civil Rights Era in a city dramatically transformed by the events of that day.

Background
Learn why the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was chosen and which suspects were and weren't brought to trial. Read the original media reports of the incident and explore the Ku Klux Klan's role. A "Names to Know" piece lists sources of in-depth information about the key figures.

The Long Legal Road
Learn what made Bill Baxley reopen the case in the 1970s and prosecute Robert Chambliss for the murder of the four girls. Explore the meandering legal timeline of this landmark case and read about how Cherry's son reconciles his possible role in the bombing.

Birmingham Then and Now
Look at how the city has and hasn't changed since the events of 1963. Articles, interviews and book reviews.

2001 Bombing Trial
Stay abreast of the latest headlines and developments in the case.

>> Discuss the Birmingham bombing trial in our Community Forum. New to our Forums? Register here.




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By Roberto (205.188.197.59) on Tuesday, May 8, 2001 - 11:10 am:

Kansascity:

You are an unconventional thinker. There are a lot of people out there who would feel threaten by unconventional thinkers like yourself. Be careful of those around you. I know, I live by the thread everyday. Like the old sicilian saying, "keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. Take care Kansascity. ~ Roberto

By Kansascity (209.242.125.224) on Sunday, May 6, 2001 - 11:59 am:

WHAT IF THEY THREW A WAR&NOBODY CAME?

The Civil Rights Movement: Growing up during that period, I noticed that STREET DRUGS had not started to rain down on all of us until about mid to late 60's...moreso in 1969 and it escalated from that point on.

Before that of course, my mother who lived in the suburbs had become addicted to many, many types of pills while I was still in high school. The drug store use to make deliveries to our door. I remember how I use to dread the sight of that delivery car coming up the driveway. I knew mom was getting worse. She was not coping very well with stuff that her husband was doing to us.

Soon street drugs were not just in the city but everywhere. Who and what is responsible for this? Were we the unwitting fools of our own mass-destruction or was it a way to weaken the movement?
I think drugs were implemented to divert our attention and generation from being able to continue to pursue real changes that were coming fast and furiously. There were allot of us 'baby boomers' then. The Vietnam war was used to get rid of many of us.

Then there was that awfull period when young people (those of us who were still around) started 'tuning in and dropping out'...Was all of this done to negate-or try to- the gains made from the movement? After what happened to the inner-cities during so called URBAN-RENEWAL (tearing down viable older buildings in the cities that could have been revamped and maintained only to replace them with high-rise ugly projects where eventually a baby was thrown down a garbage chute from a top floor) plus the drugs scorge was a way to control and disenfranchise ...especially, the younger generations in the cities/towns that had the most to benefit from desegregation (if they had been able to stay away from drugs that is).

Now more than ever, DRUG-REHABS are big business in kahoots with the DRUG-COMPANIES ETC.
I heard somewhere that most, if not all, drugs for depression that so many Americans are taking today are actually derived from LSD. The kids who have been going beserk in the schools shooting their classmates are usually taking some form of these PRESCRIBED 'medications'.

WHAT NOW ,if anything, can be done at this point to get and stay on the right track? If drugs to control people are here to stay (and have been around a longer time than we had thought) and if most everybody we are around use them (even with the 'pusher man' doctors prescriptions) then the future doesn't look to promising unless....everybody puts their drugs down and refuses to use any of them.
"Just Say No".

If this could/would happen, people who have been lulled to sleep might wake up and construtively identify the real problems confronting their lives, start doing something about them....and stop blaming each other and everyone else.

When you blame an individual or group for something they have no control over and is afflicting them as well, it keeps them in a helpless position, too.

By Kansascity (152.163.207.179) on Saturday, May 5, 2001 - 08:29 pm:

ROBERTO: "CHANGE IS GOIN.. TO COME" by Sam Cook Just had a pleasant afernoon visiting people I care a great deal for. Everybody seems to be sick with a flu bug, so have been doctoring them with Aloe Vera juice and Oregano Oil washed down with lots of water. It perked everybody right up. That Oregano is hot at first, then gradually cools down. I recommend it for many illnesses and allergies.
"I am tired of living, but afraid to ..." Certainly wish the times would change for he better and that this younger generation coming up was not so enfluenced by those who want to mislead them ..

By Roberto (205.188.196.29) on Saturday, May 5, 2001 - 02:14 pm:

Mad Scientist:

I could see you now in my mind's eye involved in the counter-culture, and the black power movement of that time. You would have been one hell of an activist. ~ Roberto

By Mad_scientist (134.124.212.217) on Saturday, May 5, 2001 - 12:28 pm:

I certainly wasn't there. The first public racial incident I remember is the beating, trial of Rodney King, followed by the riots. But from what I read about the 1960s, it was one very wild decade, filled with several major assassinations. Sometimes, I believe that I was born in the wrong era. I sometimes feel that I should've been a college student in 1969.

By Kansascity (209.242.125.208) on Saturday, May 5, 2001 - 02:14 am:

Seeing the church in Burmingham, Alabama where 4 African American girls were killed had an additional impact on me. The church, from what I recall, sits on a corner and is built of brownish/red brick. As we drove by (this was in the early 80's), I had the feeling that it was only yesterday when the country got the news. I still felt the shock of it and do still.
Also, what happened to Medgar Evers case is covered in "Never Too Late: A Prosecutor's Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case" by Bobby DeLaughter (2001). I just got it from the library. I remember hearing something about this over the newsmedia ...was it a year or 2 ago?
I also was there during the marches and riots after Martin Luther king was murdered. Those times seem not to be so long ago.
Speaking to people who do not know what those times were like is important. We all need to tell our stories.
Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when things like these events in history happened?

By Melirosa (208.48.12.163) on Friday, May 4, 2001 - 01:32 pm:

if this animal owned all the suffering in the world it would not be enough for him. the only thing that we can hope for is that he spends the rest of his life rotting in prison thinking about what he did to those 4 little angels. justice came for those little girls, but it came much to late in my opinion. this person should have been in prison long ago living his life behind bars, not free to walk the streets for so many years.

By Mad_scientist (134.124.212.217) on Thursday, May 3, 2001 - 04:46 pm:

Just wish that he lives to be 110 so that he actually suffers for what he did.

By Roberto (205.188.192.171) on Wednesday, May 2, 2001 - 06:58 pm:

Excuse my historical error. That klansman was chewing that disgusting "Red Man" tobacco, and not eating popcorn. ~ Roberto

By Roberto (205.188.192.171) on Wednesday, May 2, 2001 - 06:55 pm:

I wish my father and mother were alive today to see it. Ex-Klansman Thomas Blanton Jr. has finally been brought to justice. When I was young I remember the photo of his smirk on his face with other klansmen (one eating popcorn) awaiting a rigged jury decision of a "not guilty verdict" for killing those four little black girls in that Birmingham church. If you remember whites were not convicted for killing blacks in those days. I remember my father shouting and cursing that "there will never be justice for coloreds in this country". I remember my mother's sad face. She was a very religous person. To know that someone would bomb a church brought tears to her eyes when she talked about this to my aunt Thelma. I remember these times, because of the emotions. I was very young, but the stark reality of racism was so overt at that time that my father had to carry a gun for protection when he made plumbing deliveries in all white counties known for Klan activities. I'm please that this week has brought some closure to an ugly event of American history. But, if it was not for that unfortunate incident the events that followed, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, The Civil Rights Movement, The rise of many outstanding black leaders, the coming together of white women and men with black men and women, the social consciousness of the nation as a whole would have never happen. Yes, there was a sacrifice in those four little black girls, but their death ignited a revolution that I was proud to be a part of so many years ago that changed this country forever. ~ Roberto