![]() Relatives of all four victims were on hand, and the room was full of people opposing Blanton’s parole. In Alabama, inmates do not attend such hearings. Their deaths inside a church on a Sunday morning became a symbol worldwide of the depth of racial hatred in the segregated South.īlanton did not attend the hearing, which lasted about 30 minutes. 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. ![]() 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. ![]() He 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 the church on Sept. “Justice is served,” Lisa McNair, sister of bombing victim Denise McNair, said afterward.īlanton is the last surviving KKK member convicted of murder in the bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church. Relatives of three of the slain girls spoke against Blanton’s release during the hearing. The decision to keep Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., 76, imprisoned was met with applause at the hearing. (Alabama Department of Corrections via AP) Alabama’s parole board is scheduled to consider Blanton for early release during a meeting on Aug. This undated file photo shows Alabama inmate Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., a one-time Ku Klux Klansman convicted in the 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls in Birmingham, Ala. (AP) - Alabama’s parole board decided Wednesday against freeing a one-time Ku Klux Klansman convicted in a church bombing that killed four Black girls more than 50 years ago.
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