The last living person convicted for playing a role in the fatal 1963 Birmingham, Alabama, church bombing that killed four young Black girls was denied parole Wednesday in his first attempt to win parole.
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Blanton had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan at the time of the bombing September 15, 1963. Cash escaped justice when he died in 1994.
The board denied parole and said the next hearing would be held in five years at the earliest – the maximum possible time.
While board members could consider Blanton’s advanced age in deciding whether to grant parole, Jones said that shouldn’t be a factor. The blast killed 11-year-old Denise McNair and 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Morris, also known as Cynthia Wesley.
“It is appalling. It is shocking. It is very sorrowful and it’s very upsetting to not only me and my family, but this nation”, said Dianne Robertson Braddock, sister of Carole Robertson, in reference to the letter she received alerting her to Blanton’s request for parole. “My parents never recovered from the loss of their youngest child”.
Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley convicted the then-73-year-old Chambliss in 1977, after reopening the case in 1971, and then the case remained dormant for decades. But given Blanton’s crimes and the lives so irreparably affected, prison is the flawless place for this man to spend the final years of his life.
The Klan targeted the church because it was a leading African-American institution and served as a staging spot for the marches that met fierce resistance from city Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor, brutality that has lived on in television footage and defines the city for many people to this day. Relatives of three of the slain girls spoke against Blanton’s release during the hearing.
The New York Daily News reports that the Birmingham bomber wasn’t present for the hearing, as it isn’t a custom for inmates to attend such proceedings. No one showed up on behalf of the former Klansman either.
Doug Jones, a former USA attorney who prosecuted Blanton on the state charge, had previously said Blanton shouldn’t be released since he has never accepted responsibility for the bombing or expressed any remorse for a crime that was aimed at maintaining racial separation at a time Birmingham’s public schools were facing a court order to desegregate.
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The former USA attorney who convicted him, Doug Jones, opposed the parole request. He’s now 78 years old, and he’ll get his next parole hearing in 2021. “I think that’s an important part of parole considerations, and it’s completely lacking in this case”.
