Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. was a young Ku Klux Klansman with a reputation for hating blacks in 1963, when a bomb ripped a hole in the side of 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four black girls during the civil rights movement.
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Blanton, now 76, was responsible for the deadly 16 Street Baptist Church Bombing that killed four girls. He is serving a life sentence at St. Clair Correctional Facility for the September 1963 bombing that killed Denise McNair, Cynthia Morris Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins.
The powerful bomb was planted under the church steps and it collapsed a basement wall into a lounge the four girls used for changing into their choir robes. 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.
Alabama’s attorney general, Luther Strange, also lodged an official protest against granting Blanton parole.
The decision to keep Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., 78, imprisoned was met with applause.
The possibility of Blanton’s parole was an emotional one for family members as well as prosecutors, who fought for years to put Blanton behind bars.
The girls, who were inside the church preparing for worship, died instantly in a hail of bricks and stone that seriously injured Collins’ sister, Sarah Collins Rudolph.
The Pardons and Paroles Board denied parole for Thomas Blanton, 86, the last surviving bomber.
It was the first time Blanton, who spent more than three decades free after the crime, was eligible for early release.
“We were at that church learning about love and forgiveness when someone was outside doing hateful things”, she said. Opponents took up seats normally reserved for inmates’ relatives, and members of the Birmingham NAACP chapter rode to Montgomery on a bus to be there.
Douglas Jones, a former US attorney for Alabama’s Northern District who led the prosecution team against Blanton, strongly opposed the elderly inmate’s release from prison because he’s never expressed remorse or taken responsibility for the crime that ended the lives of four young girls. “We have justice. And justice has finally said he needs to serve his time”. Robert Chambliss and Bobby Frank Cherry died in prison. “We want him to remain in prison”, Falls commented about the parole hearing.
Blanton has denied involvement in the bombing. He’s among three one-time Klansmen convicted in the blast. Evidence against Blanton included secret recordings that were made using Federal Bureau of Investigation bugs at his home and in the auto of a fellow Klansman turned informant.
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Blanton can be considered for parole again in five years. “It is appalling”, she said.
