Blood, Murder and Redemption: Part 1
By Andrew Beck Grace

Alpha Robertson, an elderly black woman who sat in a wheelchair before a jury this week in the Criminal Justice building in Birmingham, Ala., refused to look at Bobby Frank Cherry, the gray-haired 71-year-old man accused of planting the bomb that killed her 14-year-old daughter in 1963.

She told the jury how her daughter, Carol, had gotten her first pair of real black pumps in anticipation for the Youth Sunday that weekend at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Prosecutor Doug Jones asked Robertson if she remembered hearing the bomb go off. "Yes," she said, holding back tears, "It was an awful sound like something was shaking the world."

Last week marked the beginning of the end for civil rights-era cases in Alabama. The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing of Sept. 15, 1963, which killed four young black girls, will likely be the last Alabama criminal case from that turbulent period. Considered by many to be the most heinous crime of the era, the case has already landed convictions of two of the primary suspects, Robert Chambliss in 1977 and Thomas Blanton Jr. last year.

The prosecution's opening statement last Tuesday attempted to recreate the tumult of 1963. George Wallace, with his famous proclamation "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever," became governor of Alabama. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to Birmingham to protest and was jailed, writing his famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," on April 16. In June, Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama, attempting to block the entry of two black students. In August, King gave his "I Have a Dream," speech in Washington. And on Sept. 10, Birmingham schools were desegregated. Five days later, a bomb ripped through the ladies lounge at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

While the prosecution's opening statement dealt primarily with the history of the time period, the crime was placed in a contemporary context — at least rhetorically. "The bombing," said prosecutor Robert Posey, "was an instrument of terror." He implored the jury to "lift the white robe."

Seated in the gallery last Tuesday, scribbling furiously with the opening statements, were Howell Raines and Rick Bragg, two of the best known and most respected journalists to ever come out of Alabama. Bragg, a New York Times staff writer who won a Pulitzer Prize for a piece about a poor laundry woman in Mississippi, recently wrote an emotional piece for the Sunday Times on the wounds that will not heal in this city once known as "Bombingham." Raines, the executive editor of the Times, had covered the Chambliss trial in 1977. When Robertson was wheeled into the courtroom, she looked up at him with admiration and thanks. He bent down and kissed her cheek.

After the prosecution's opening statement, it took the next four days to lay out its case, calling a host of witnesses. Family members of the girls, retired FBI agents, a civil rights leader, an ex-wife and a granddaughter of Cherry all took the stand to testify.

While the prosecution's case has some strong moments, the evidence presented to the jury was largely circumstantial. It's indisputable that Cherry bragged about being a member of the Klan to everyone from the FBI to a total stranger in Dallas in 1982, but his actual role in the bombing is still unclear.

Mitchell Burns, a former Klansman turned informant, testified that in March of 1965 he heard Cherry make a statement, "They [the FBI] think we made the bomb somewhere else." In cross examination, the defense poked holes in Burns' credibility by showing that each night Burns' spent with the defendant as an informant had been a night of heavy drinking. In his testimony to the prosecution, Burns stated, "We went to every honky-tonk between here and Blount County, and when we got tired of that we went to every one between here and Bessemer."

In an FBI interview with Agent John Downey on Sept. 24, 1964, a year and nine days after the bombing, Cherry stated, "The only reason I didn't do the bombing was maybe because somebody beat me to it."

Cherry's ex-wife, Willadean Brogdon, a former truck driver who met Cherry at a truck stop in Indiana in 1969, testified that Cherry had admitted to planting the bomb at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. She said he was sorry it had killed children, but had commented, "At lest they couldn't grow up to have more niggers."

She saw Cherry's Klan robe when they first moved in together during the summer of 1970. After they were married, the couple lived in Birmingham with Cherry's seven children and Brogdon's five. At one point in their relationship, she testified Cherry had put on the robe and danced around in front of the children. "He put it on to show what he looked like as a Klans-person," she said.

In cross-examination of Brogdon, the defense questioned her on inconsistencies with her testimony at trial, and that she gave to a grand jury in 1999. At one point she crossed her arms and said, "If that's the way I said it then, then that's the way I said it then. If that's the way I say it now, then that's the way I say it now." Later, when defense attorney Mickey Johnson asked her to repeat the dates she had previously given the prosecution, Brogdon answered, "You should be writing this stuff down." The courtroom broke out into laughter.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence of Cherry's involvement was that of Michael Goings, who was working as a maintenance man for an apartment complex his mother managed during the early 1980s in Dallas. Goings testified that Cherry was the carpet cleaner for the apartment complex, and that they had met on several occasions. One afternoon in 1982 while he, his mother, his girlfriend and two men working for Cherry were cleaning an apartment, Cherry and Goings' mother had begun a conversation about Birmingham, where both had previously resided. The conversation turned to the black population, and the Klan. Goings testified, "He said, 'You know I bombed that church,' and everybody got real quiet." Goings said his mother finally broke the silence. "Well," she had said.

Inevitably, historical meaning is apparent to a trial of such atrocity which occurred in such a volatile time. Bragg, commenting on the case and the legacy of these trials in the South told me, "It really is gothic. It's all about blood, murder and redemption."

Redemption — maybe. The families, the community and the world that has waited 39 years to find out the verdict will finally get their chance sometime this week. But many doubt the chance for redemption in a case so long in the making.

Chris McNair, whose daughter Denise, only 11 at the time, was killed in the blast, said he remembers the morning "too vividly." After the explosion, he went to the hospital to search for his only daughter and wife who had both been at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. When he got there, they led him into a room which was serving as a temporary morgue.

"On the tables were the four girls," he said. He identified Denise's body. "She had a piece of mortar smashed into her head."

And Sarah Collins, the only survivor of the blast had walked 16 blocks to church that morning with her sister, Addie Mae. Sarah was 12, Addie Mae 14. She stood with the four girls in the ladies lounge, primping and getting ready for Youth Sunday. Denise had asked Addie to tie her sash. When Sarah turned around from the sink to see what the other girls were talking about, she said, "I heard this loud noise, boom, and I didn't know what happened."

Pieces of glass had flown into Sarah's eyes. She was blinded, and she fell to the floor.

"I said, Addie, Addie, Addie," she testified.

The courtroom was silent. Prosecutor Doug Jones asked, "Did you ever see your sister alive again?"

"No," she answered, "I never did."

Part 2

— graphic by Carl Durbridge (carl@fuzzynet.co.uk)