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1963 Birmingham church bomber denied parole

He was convicted in 2001 for the dynamite bombing of the church, an incident which gave momentum to the civil rights movement.

By Ed Adamczyk
A Wednesday parole hearing is scheduled for Thomas Banton, the last surviving inmate convicted in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. The dynamite blast killed, clockwise from top left, Addie Mae Collins, 14, Cynthia Wesley, 14, Carole Robertson, 14, and Denise McNair, 11. Photo from UPI Archives.
1 of 2 | A Wednesday parole hearing is scheduled for Thomas Banton, the last surviving inmate convicted in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. The dynamite blast killed, clockwise from top left, Addie Mae Collins, 14, Cynthia Wesley, 14, Carole Robertson, 14, and Denise McNair, 11. Photo from UPI Archives.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Aug. 3 (UPI) -- Thomas Blanton, the last survivor of a group convicted of a 1963 Birmingham, Ala., church bombing, was denied parole Wednesday.

After impassioned comment by a number of people involved in the case, a two-man panel denied the parole. Blanton will be eligible for another hearing in five years.

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Blanton, now 78, was convicted in 2001 in the dynamite bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church on Sept. 15, 1963, and is serving a life imprisonment term. The church bombing, 18 days after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s celebrated "I Have a Dream" speech during the March on Washington, killed four African-American girls there to attend Sunday school classes. Denise McNair, 14; Cynthia Morris Wesley, 14; Addie Mae Collins, 14, and Carole Robertson, 14, died; 23 others were injured.

The incident shocked the nation and helped galvanize support for federal civil rights legislation.

There were no arrests in the case for years, until federal and state prosecutors re-examined it and continued investigations. Robert Chambliss was convicted in 1977 and Bobby Frank Cherry in 2002; each died in prison. Herman Cash was implicated in the case but died in 1994 without being charged.

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ARCHIVE Grief, rage hang over church blast scene

"At the heart of the case is the lives of four children. At the heart of this hearing is four life sentences," Jefferson county District Attorney Brandon Falls said at the parole hearing.

Lisa McNair, younger sister of Denise McNair, spoke of a ""legacy of pain," and Edwina Robertson Braddock, sister of Carole Robertson, said it would be 'travesty" to release Blanton.

Blanton, an admitted Ku Klux Klan member, is in the St. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville, Ala., and will not attend Wednesday's hearing of the Alabama Board of Pardons and Parolees. Family and friends of the four girls, representatives of the NAACP and other civil rights groups and former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones, who prosecuted Blanton, were present at the hearing.

Arthur Price, current pastor of the church, noted the church earned an iconic place in the civil rights movement in May 1963, when a children's march for peace ended with fire hoses and police dogs ordered by Bull Connor, Birmingham police commissioner.

"We believe because of that, the church became a symbol and a target," Price said. "All that did was to motivate the church and galvanize a movement for justice for all people," the Birmingham News reported.

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"Keep him in prison, that's as simple as it is. He's not served his debt to society at this point. We want him to remain in prison," Falls commented about the parole hearing.

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