By Stuart Wexler
The conventional narrative for the tragedy that struck
Birmingham a half century ago today is straightforward. On the morning
of September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded at the 16th Street Baptist
Church, wounding 22 parishioners and killing four young girls. The
bombing conspirators escaped justice at the time because FBI Director J.
Edgar Hoover feared that cooperating with local law enforcement would
expose their sources and methods to a racist Birmingham police force,
compromising the chance for a federal prosecution.
Years later, Alabama Attorney General William Baxley
embarrassed the FBI in the press, eventually leading agents to share
some of the files and helping convict one of the bombers, Robert
“Dynamite Bob” Chambliss in 1977.
In the mid-1990s, the case was reopened, this time with
the Feds leading the investigation. Tapes that Baxley never heard were
used as evidence against two other conspirators, Tommy Blanton and Bobby
Frank Cherry, who went to prison in the 2000s. It took 40 years, the
story goes, but the case is now closed.
If only it were true. There is little doubt that the men
who went to prison and their associates were guilty of the bombing, but
newly obtained information suggests there is much more to the story.
It turns out the FBI has yet to reveal many of the
documents regarding the white supremacist leader that authorities
suspected masterminded the bombing, J.B. Stoner, despite him dying in
2005.
There were many reasons why Stoner became a suspect in
the bombing. Stoner co-founded one of the most militant white
supremacist organizations in the country, the National States Rights
Party (NSRP), a group headquartered in Birmingham and connected to much
of the violent pro-segregationist agitation in the city. Law enforcement
officials suspected Stoner as having orchestrated a wave of coordinated
bombings and attempted bombings against black and Jewish targets in the
1950s. This included the 1958 bombing of Birmingham civil rights
activist Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth’s church — a bombing he was convicted
of in 1980.
In 1963, Stoner was investigated in connection with
several bombings, as the NSRP began to associate more and more with the
violent Eastview Klavern number 13, whose members included Chambliss,
Blanton and Cherry.
The FBI received reports that Stoner trained the
Eastview group — who met secretly by a bridge near the Cahaba River — in
bomb-making techniques. They also received information that Stoner met
with Chambliss before and after the bombing. From the start, Stoner was a
top suspect for both the Birmingham police and for the FBI.
Source: Journey to Justice
