Ku Klux Klan Convicted in '63 Bombing
Birmingham, Ala.
Thomas Blanton, Jr., 62, was sentenced tolife in prison by the same jury that found himguilty of the 1963 bombing of an Alabama church that killed 4 black girls.
Blanton is the 2nd Klansman to be convicted of planting the bomb that went off at the 16th St. Baptist Church on Sept. 15, 1963. "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss was convicted of murder in 1977 and died in prison in 1985.
Another Klansman, Bobby Frank Cherry, was indicted last year, but his trial was delayed because his mental capacity may not allow for him to stand trial. A 4th suspect, Herman Cash, died before he could be charged.
A 5th Klan goon, Mitchell Burns, helped rat out his fellow white supremacists with a 1964 FBI wire-tap that helped convict Blanton.
This case is just the latest from the civil rights era to be revived and tried by southern prosecutors.
Byron de la Beckwith was convicted in 1994 of the 1963 assassination of civil rights icon Medgar Evers, and Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers was convicted in 1998 of the '66 firebomb-killing of an NAACP leader.
