The brutal attack was aimed at terrorizing the city’s Black population that was waging a battle against the racist system of Jim Crow segregation. Four Black girls killed in the explosion were preparing for a Sunday morning youth day service. The church was a well-known organizing center for activities related to the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Marchers set out from the church for demonstrations that became known as the Battle of Birmingham. The bombing came just five days after the movement had scored a victory in forcing the integration of the Birmingham city schools.

For 15 years, starting in the late 1940s, the Ku Klux Klan, with the full knowledge and protection of the ruling class in the city, used bombing as a common terror tactic. Homes of Blacks in the neighborhood of College Hill were so frequently blown up that it was called "Dynamite Hill." This was an extension of the lynchings and other violence by rightist groups and the police that for decades maintained the racist system of discrimination and second-class citizenship for Blacks.

Cherry, described in the Birmingham News as "the man who years ago beat blacks with brass knuckles and pistol butts," is the last living suspect to be prosecuted in the Sept. 15, 1963, bombing. Cherry was an active member of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was one of a number of reactionary organizations used to terrorize participants in the civil rights movement, as well as the unionization efforts and other resistance taking place in the labor movement in the South. Not only did these groups function with the knowledge of the government, but police and public officials were often Klan members.

Cherry was a demolition expert in the Marine Corps. The explosion took a five-foot-wide and two-foot-deep chunk out of the ladies basement lounge where the four girls were at the time. The blast mangled cars and shattered windows.

Chester Colston, a retired barber whose shop was just a couple of blocks from the church, said at the May 22 celebration, "When the bomb went off I heard it and came running down here." Colston said many youth and others protested in a nearby park every day after the bombing.

The event at the church drew working people from all parts of Birmingham. Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Rev. Abraham Woods, Dr. Calvin Woods, and many other prominent figures attended and spoke.

Woods introduced Shuttlesworth as "the man who met a bull and turned him into a steer." He was referring to Eugene "Bull" Connor, the racist commissioner of public safety in Birmingham during that period.

"We have white, Black, brown, and other colors here today, which is what we need," Shuttlesworth said. "Today whites should feel just as free as we do," he said. "Whites and Blacks were held captive. Many whites wanted to express their dissent with segregation, but were as intimidated as we were.... Now after 40 years of being free, or acting like he was free, Cherry is going to prison."  
 
‘We took our rights’
Sam Harrell, a retired worker who came to join the action, said, "If it was not for the movement, we would still be behind where we were. Don’t believe when they say somebody gave us our rights. We had to take them. Every day we lined up to protest the bombing they would lock us up."

Cherry has denied involvement in the bombing throughout the trial and reportedly will appeal. Several of his family members, however, testified in court that they heard him brag about making the bomb, lighting the fuse, or helping to blow up Blacks in Birmingham.

One of the issues Cherry will appeal is the illegal use of several tapes made by FBI snitches, leading up to the bombing. But the garbled tapes don’t even include Cherry on them.

These tape recordings and thousands of other incriminating documents the FBI stored up over the years above all show that the federal government knew of the bombings and had definite suspects, but took no real action on it. A so-called investigation was opened by the FBI in the 1960s. The investigation fizzled by 1965 due to "mistrust between local and federal investigators."

Of the three others accused in the bombing, Robert Chambliss was convicted in 1977 for his role in the attack and died in prison in 1985, Herman Cash died without facing prosecution, and Thomas Blanton was convicted May 2001 and sentenced to four consecutive life terms in prison.

Cherry was originally to be tried with Blanton, but Circuit Judge James Garrett postponed the proceedings based on claims of his mental inability to stand trial. In January of this year Garrett found him fit for trial.

Jennie Kim, a 20-year old student at Trinity College in Connecticut, was following the trial. She came back to Birmingham during a break, and saw an ad for the celebration, and came down to join it. "I wanted to see how the city would respond to the event. The turnout; what other people would say about it. When things like this [conviction] happen, it’s monumental. You have to be where it happens. It’s not enough to just listen or read about it."

Brian Taylor is a coal miner and a member of United Mine Workers of America Local 2133.  
 
 
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