Parole Hearing for Thomas Blanton, 16th Street Baptist Church Bomber, Set For Wednesday

The last surviving Klansman convicted in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four little girls is up for parole. On Wednesday, August 3, the Alabama Board of Pardons and Parole will consider whether to release 78-year-old Thomas Blanton, who has been locked up 15 years and was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.

Family members of bombing victims Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Morris Wesley, Carole Robertson and Denise McNair, say they’ll be in Montgomery Wednesday for the hearing. The prosecutor in the case, the NAACP and the church’s current pastor say they’ll be there too — pleading for Blanton to stay in jail.

“Just because you’re eligible for parole, does not mean you should be paroled,” says Rev. Arthur Price, current pastor of 16^th Street Baptist Church. “If justice is going to mean anything in this society, if black lives truly matter, then it would be just to serve out his sentence.”

At the height of the civil rights movement, marchers assembled at 16^th Street Baptist Church before heading into the streets. Blanton and some of his friends, angry over desegregation attempts, hid dynamite that exploded at 10:22 a.m. on Sept. 15, 1963. The four girls had just left Sunday School where the lesson was “A Love that Forgives.”

Today, the congregation at 16^th Street Baptist is still mostly black, but at a recent church service people of different races filled the main level of the sanctuary. The choir sang a gospel reflecting this church’s continued resolve – No Weapon (Formed Against us Shall Prosper).

Rev. Price says, “what Mr. Blanton meant for evil, God, in His sovereignty, turned it for good.”

The bombing spurred passage of the Civil Right Act, and later passage of the Voting Rights Act

Alabama Department of Corrections
Thomas Blanton

Blanton has maintained his innocence. Lawyers say his failure to acknowledge responsibility may affect his chance for parole.

“He’s not expressed any remorse,” says Doug Jones, the former U.S. Attorney who was the prosecutor in the Blanton case. “I feel pretty confident they will do the right thing and keep him in prison.”

Parole for Blanton, Jones says, “would be an awful message that would be sent –especially from Alabama with our prior history.”

Blanton declined an interview for this story. Efforts to reach his family and friends also failed.

Diane Robertson Braddock is flying in from Maryland for the hearing. Her little sister, Carole, died in the church bombing. She says when she got the call about the hearing she was surprised.

“I was floored. I was like how could this man who has only served 15 years for four counts of murder even be eligible for parole?” she says.

Her mother, Alpha Robertson, lived to see the conviction of the three Klansmen charged in the bombing. But recently, that call from the parole office telling her about Blanton’s possible parole “just brought back all of the hurt and the pain,” she says.

While the church advocates forgiveness, in spite of the pain and scars. Rev. Price, the 16^th Street pastor, says there is another law.

“The law of harvest is still the same, for the Bible says whatever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. If you sow hatred, you’re going to reap hatred. If you sow murder, the penalty in this case is four consecutive life sentences.”

Blanton has served the minimum of 15 years required in Alabama before parole is possible. Wednesday in Montgomery, the parole board decides whether Blanton goes free or continues to sow life behind the wired fences and steel doors of a state prison.