Day in Court

All that was left was to determine when — the day and hour — I was to appear in court to testify. It was not a matter of going to the courthouse to sit around waiting to be called forth from the spectators or a witness room as it’s done on television. Nothing that simple.

I waited and tried to behave normally on Monday. I knew that a string of technical witnesses would be called first. This was the nuts-and-bolts of establishing that a crime had, in fact, been committed. The cause of the death of Denise McNair would be established by coroner’s reports, by those who had investigated the scene, and by people who were there when the blast occurred. Police and fire department witnesses would establish that an explosion had taken place and that it had been caused by dynamite. Defense attorney Art Hanes had won the point on barring the use of the word “bomb” in describing the explosion.

No one could say how long all of this would take, so I was simply on standby until I was needed. Yet I couldn’t be there in the courthouse. There could be no questions or speculation; better that no attention was drawn to me. And I think my showing up at the last minute ensured that my story would already have been told before I could be intimidated by the cross-examination skills of defense attorney Art Hanes, Jr., or the process of the trial itself.

Monday evening I read the afternoon newspaper and watched stories about the first day of trial on the television news. During the early evening, I received a telephone call telling me that they should be getting to me on Tuesday, so I should stay home and be prepared to come downtown when I was notified.

Tuesday morning, November 15, 1977, I read the morning newspaper, the Birmingham Post-Herald, which carried several stories about the trial. The first witness called had been the Reverend John H. Cross who had been pastor of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in September 1963. He told about that morning. The Sunday School lesson was on “the love that forgives,” he said. He had been teaching the women’s Bible class in the sanctuary of the church when “all of a sudden an explosion went off. It sounded like the whole world was shaking, and the building, I thought, was going to collapse.”

Then Sarah Collins Riley, the younger sister of Addie Mae Collins, testified. Sarah had been the fifth child in the ladies’ lounge that morning, and she described the scene and told the court that she lost an eye in the explosion.

Captain William Berry, Assistant Fire Marshal, testified about the explosion itself from the evidence on the scene. After Captain Berry came Dr. Joe Donald, who was the chief resident in surgery at the University Hospital, which in 1963 was the old Hillman Clinic.

Early Tuesday morning, November 15, Bob Eddy called making sure I was available.

“Should I come down there? Will you pick me up, or what?” I asked.

“Stay there. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll call you back and allow time to get you here. Just sit tight.”

“OK.”

“Are you all right?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ll be fine. I know you will. It’ll all be over soon. Just hang on.”

We hung up. I remember puttering about the house putting things in order.

I remember sitting and just looking at the telephone. I remember that it rang a couple of times with other calls. I would hurry each time to get off the line as quickly as possible.

When Jon Yung and George Beck had passed the word to me that it was definite I would be called to testify, I told them that I would on one condition.

There was visible tensing against what I might demand. This was one of the few times I saw George Beck prior to the trial. He was in town, and he, Jon Yung, and Bob Eddy met with me that day.

“The only way I can walk in there is if Bob is with me every step of the way,” I told them.

“I’ll be there,” Bob Eddy had responded quietly.

“I mean actually with me. And stay with me, in and out,” I was emphatic.

“You got it! I won’t let go,” Bob grinned as he made that promise. He knew that I meant for him to act as bodyguard. He knew I meant for him to physically take the risk with me. And he agreed. I almost felt vindicated in my initial decision to trust him. Had it truly been only three months that I had known him?

The call to come to the courthouse that Tuesday morning came much earlier than I had expected, although I had been dressed and waiting for several hours. I left the parsonage immediately and drove east into downtown. I passed the courthouse on Twenty-first Street and proceeded another block on Eighth Avenue to Twenty-second Street, then turned right onto one-way Twenty-second beside the 2121 Building, as I had been instructed to do. As I eased my way slowly along the line of cars parked at meters, I saw Bob. He was waiting on the sidewalk by an empty parking space. I parked my car at the curb, and Bob put coins in the meter. He then led me to another car, and I got into the back seat.

The drive to the courthouse was short, but it seemed to take forever. The driver went around an extra block or two and Bob sat sideways in the front passenger seat scanning behind the car and to the sides. The precautions seemed elaborate, yet there was a long list of murders and unexplained deaths leading up to this day. As we rode, it seemed to sink in for the first time that these men were doing a job. A duty. Whatever deeper motivations there might have been, no matter how honorable, they were there because it was how they earned their paycheck. That was not a comforting thought. I forced those thoughts down and consciously reaffirmed my decision to trust and my resolve to do this thing. It had been so long, and now the hour had come.

Soon the driver swung the car onto Twenty-first Street heading toward the Jefferson County Courthouse. He turned left off the one way street into a driveway that led us under the tall old impressive front steps of the courthouse to a basement entrance near the loading docks. Bob and I got out and entered the building, taking an elevator upstairs. Getting off the elevator into a deserted hallway, he led me to an empty room and showed me where I might sit to wait. Then he left me alone, with instructions to stay there until he came for me. I waited for more than a half hour, sitting, standing, pacing, and wanting a cigarette. I wandered around in an empty courtroom alone. At one point a stranger opened the door and then went away when I said I was waiting for someone.

At last Bob came back. “They are waiting for you,” he said as he took my hand and led me back into the corridor and then onto the elevator again. When the elevator doors opened, the quiet of the building gave way to a din coming from the hallway. The elevator lobby of each floor in the building forms a T with a long hallway that runs the length of the building north and south, so I could not see the source of the noise until we rounded the corner.

The trial was taking place in Courtroom 306, at the end of the hallway. There was a crowd of reporters, along with camera personnel, lights and wires and microphones. There was a cordon of uniformed officers down each side of the hallway leading to a standing metal detector at the doorway into the courtroom itself. Bob led me down this guarded path wordlessly until we reached the officer manning the metal detector.

“You can’t go in. The court has been sealed,” the officer ordered.

“They are waiting for us,” Bob told him.

“The courtroom has been sealed. I can’t let anybody in. It’s for security.”

“This is the witness it was sealed for, you idiot! Now let us pass through,” Bob growled inches from the man’s face so he would not be overheard by the crowd behind us. He still had hold of my hand, and I think I was trying to hide behind him.

The deputy flushed and stepped inside, to reappear in seconds. He verified my name and muttered an apology. Meanwhile, the news reporters who were being held back several feet behind us were demanding to know, “Who is that? What’s happening?”

As the door opened, every eye in the room seemed to be glued to it. Apparently it had not been announced who was being called as the next witness. I was told that the media and the spectators as well as the defense team expected Tommy Rowe, and defense attorney Art Hanes, Jr., was prepared for him.

There was an almost absolute quiet that was unnerving after the din in the hallway. The quiet gave way to a murmur and then a buzz of whispers. I focused on Bob’s back and the witness chair ahead as he led me toward it. As we approached the table where the prosecution attorneys were seated, Attorney General Bill Baxley stood up and formally called me to the stand. I saw Art Hanes, Jr., and his father, the city’s former mayor, lean in toward Robert. And I saw Robert’s face set in anger as he shook his head from side to side.

When I had been sworn in and seated, I looked out over the crowd assembled in the room and instantly recognized several faces. Courtroom 306 is a very large room with a main floor and a balcony, and it was packed. The jury was to my right; the judge, the Honorable Wallace C. Gibson, to my left. The prosecution attorneys were directly in front of me, and the defense was in front of the judge’s bench.

Each time I would glance toward my left, I saw Robert staring at me as though his stern anger would enable him to intimidate me into silence as it had so many times for so many years. I found that if I leaned just a little to the left and did not sit up perfectly straight, the corner of the judge’s bench blocked my view of his face. I believe that was what enabled me to maintain control enough to accomplish what I had come to do.

Jon Yung conducted the questioning, and it went smoothly enough. Even with an occasional objection from Art Hanes, Jr., I was able to remain composed and deliberate.

I responded to Jon Yung’s questions as to my name, residence, occupation, and whether I was related to the defendant. He then moved on to ask whether I remembered the September 15, 1963, bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Art Hanes, Jr., objected to Yung’s using the word “bombing.” The wording of the question was changed to “explosion,” and the questions continued.

When asked about my visit to the Chambliss house on Saturday morning before the Sunday bombing, I told the court that there had been an incident the evening before that I brought to Robert’s attention. The newspaper article reported that a white girl had been stabbed through a bus window and that Bob Gafford had offered a hundred dollar reward. Art Hanes, Jr., again objected. The judge and the attorneys talked back and forth, and finally the judge sent the jury out of the courtroom. For the next 15 or 20 minutes, I testified about the angry and harsh statements Robert had made. This is called “voir dire evidence,” when the judge determines whether the jury should hear the testimony.

Judge Gibson interrupted to tell me that I should repeat the language Robert had used. He said, “I am not trying to embarrass the witness, but I think the language — I mean, sometimes we can’t deal in niceties, and I think this is one of those times.”

I told the court that he had said that if his “buddies” had backed him up, he would have “had the ‘niggers’ in their place by now” and that he had been “fighting a one-man war since 1942.” When I was answering questions about Robert’s demeanor, Hanes objected again, and the judge instructed me that I could say he “appeared to be angry” but I couldn’t say that he “was angry.” Then Hanes argued that none of this should be heard by the jury, and Yung argued that it should. They cited cases and precedents until at last the jury was brought back in, and I had to repeat that portion of my testimony for them.

Also, I told the court that Robert had told me he had “enough ‘stuff’ put away to flatten half of Birmingham” and that “the FBI or police could pick him up and search all they wanted to but they wouldn’t find it unless he pointed it out to them.”

I told the court that he had warned, “Just wait until after Sunday morning, and they’ll beg us to let them segregate!”

I told the court that the Saturday evening after the explosion at the church, I had sat in the room while Robert watched a news broadcast during which Robert had said, “It wasn’t meant to hurt anybody; it didn’t go off when it was supposed to” when the announcer said that murder charges might be lodged against the bombers.

At length Jon Yung finished direct questioning and handed me off to the defense for cross-examination. Robert had written something on a legal pad while I testified, and Art Hanes, Jr., referred to it as he got to his feet. I noticed that Robert continued to write on that yellow pad.

After a few easy questions reminding everyone in the courtroom that George Wallace, too, had said he was fighting to save segregation, Hanes started with the hard questions. He picked at my testimony, trying to discredit and confuse me, which is, after all, what cross-examination is all about.

He questioned such things as the use of the word “stuff,” asking had I seen any “stuff.” He seemed to think something was refuted by my not defining what was meant when I said Chambliss had used the word “stuff” to describe what he had that would “flatten half of Birmingham. ” He argued that the words I had repeated from Chambliss were angry words used by many white men in the Sixties. He referred to the use of “nigger” in Robert’s remarks which I had testified to, saying that was common in those days.

Then he asked whether these things happened before or after I divorced my first husband. The way the question was worded, however, showed he intended it as a slur on my character. It was the tone of voice and the grin on his face that indicated his meaning. I swallowed a little flare of anger as I answered; simultaneously Baxley objected to the question and his objection was sustained.

Then Hanes attacked my memory of those conversations. After 14 years, he ridiculed, the court was expected to believe that I remembered so perfectly what had been said. He pulled a couple of dates at random and asked me what I had been doing on those dates. Now this was where it almost got funny; nerves can easily spill over into hysteria, so I struggled a bit to maintain composure. It happened that he named dates that were on or near significant events or routines so that I actually did recall something of what I was doing and answered him accordingly.

After several of these, he named a date that meant nothing to me, and as I started to get angry at this treatment, the prosecution again objected. Again, the objection was sustained. Art Hanes, Jr., soon ended his cross-examination, reserving the right to recall me to the stand.

Before I was allowed to step down, I was questioned again about my memory of those statements of Robert’s, and I said that it was “a weekend that I shall never forget.”

“No further questions, your Honor,” I finally heard them say after I’d been handed back and forth for questioning nine times —  five by the prosecution and four by the defense.

“The witness may step down,” Judge Gibson dismissed me, instructing the prosecution to keep me available. As I stood up, my legs were weak and my hands were cold, but Bob Eddy was right there. He had stayed nearby throughout the time I had been on the witness stand. It was nearing 2:30 p.m.

Bob took my arm and led me back along that aisle and out through that cordon of uniforms in the hallway. I kept my eyes down watching the floor until we were out and clear of the crowd. I think I was worried  I might stumble and fall I was so shaky. I saw my Uncle Howard trying to get to me in the hallway, but we did not stop.

Bob took me toward the elevators and then changed his mind, and we went down the stairs. Not to the basement to be taken away by car, as I expected; instead we left the stairwell on the first floor and calmly walked out through the front doors of the courthouse. Breathing deeply the crisp November air, I walked with him across the wide plaza between the heavy sets of brass doors to the steps and down to the sidewalk.

We crossed Twenty-first Street just as though we had been in the building to buy an automobile tag or business license, and walked down the alley behind the 2121 Building to Twenty-second Street toward where my car was parked. But first Bob took me to a coffee shop at a nearby motel. When I had regained my calm and we had established which route I was to take, he put me into my car and followed me to the refuge that I had prearranged for my seclusion until the trial was over and the verdict was in.

Robert Chambliss was free on bond. He was going home every night after the court recessed. In court, he scowled, he glowered, and (I learned later) he scribbled on his yellow legal pad: “Art Hanes, Tommy Rowe, Libby Cobbs . . . ” over and over.

No Turning Back

Bill Baxley called the grand jury back into session in September 1977, and on September 26,  indictments were returned against Robert Chambliss for four counts of murder resulting from the dynamite explosion at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963. He was arrested at his home that same afternoon by a deputy sheriff. Bob Eddy went with the deputy and waited while Chambliss changed his clothes and sat for Tee to comb his hair. Subsequently bond was set at $200,000.

I had hoped that Robert would remain in jail until the trial, but friends and family members managed to raise the money to post bond after about ten days. Once the wheels were in motion and Robert knew that he would be tried, the danger was great.

I do not know how Robert learned that I might speak against him. That question has never been answered. The only possibility I have been able to discover is that either Ernie Cantrell or Jack LeGrand let it be known that I had spoken to Bob Eddy rather than the grand jury. Perhaps Robert’s attorneys noted my name on the grand jury witness list. However he found out, I learned that he threatened to make a phone call and have me killed and my church bombed.

I took his threats against me and my church seriously. Yet I continued to conceal my cooperation and my intention to testify, if needed.

Late in October, I was told that a trial date had been set: November 14. From that point on, there was a sense of urgency about every meeting with the men who worked for the attorney general of the State of Alabama. Each meeting was gravely serious, and I would be asked the same questions a dozen different ways, as well as new ones. I was also given occasional tidbits of information about the other evidence to be presented and other witnesses. There was also mention of other investigations that were expected to become of primary focus when the trial of Robert Chambliss was over.

It had become pretty well established that my personal knowledge and observations, those to which I could give direct testimony, would be useful in this case but probably not in the other cases. Yet it was crucial that those others be pursued because those were the men who would feel threatened and vengeful enough to cause me and other innocent people harm after the Chambliss trial was completed and the information was public.

I started to feel like a fish on a hook. They wanted to hang on and play me until all were safely in the boat, but then what: Would I be thrown out wounded to fend for myself? Would I wind up fried and served up on a platter?

I had one last meeting with Jon Yung just days before the trial was scheduled to begin; all contact after that would be by telephone. I went to the motel near the civic center where we had met several times before. He was in a first-floor room visible from the parking lot. I parked some fifty feet or so from the door and walked to the room; I had learned not to park by the room I was going to. That way, if someone recognized my car, they might not figure out which room I was in. Then I had to be careful and not be noticed going in or out.

Jon was in his shirt sleeves, but he did have on his tie; his suit jacket was on a chair near the dresser. The rooms were always neat where we met. Except for papers and files, tape recorders occasionally, cameras, and other equipment, there was little sign that the men occupied the space. There was usually a coffeepot or some sort of soda available.

I knew that Bob Eddy had been away from home for months, except for an occasional day or two. I assumed the same was true for Jon Yung. Both of them were looking tired and often seemed harassed and worried.

I sat in a chair near the door facing into the room with my back toward the window. The drapes were closed. Jon sat down occasionally on the corner of the bed or on the dresser, but mostly he paced about.

I recall that I was chilled. I recall my muscles being very tight and painful trying to avoid trembling. I do not remember that it was particularly cold, though, just the usual early November nip in the air.

It was definite now; the only things that would make it unnecessary for me to testify would be either a confession—which was not likely—or the death of one of us: Robert or me. As the trial date approached, it became more and more real. For all those years it had been a hope, a dread, a fear. Now it was a scheduled event. It felt somewhat like preparing for surgery. You have to be there, but you have absolutely no control over the outcome.

Of course I was nervous. Of course I was afraid. It seemed that we had covered everything there was to cover and the afternoon meeting had turned into early evening. As I started to get up, preparing to leave, Jon stepped in front of me. He had a large envelope in his hand. “Are you ready for these?” he asked, as he handed me the contents of the envelope.

I took the eight-by-ten sheets of heavy paper, and although I do not know what I did expect, I looked at something that was totally unexpected. At first it was hard to focus and understand what was in the black-and-white overexposed glossy photograph at the top of the stack. As my eyes adjusted, the details started to emerge: walls, cabinets, instruments, a gurney with a wadded sheet and — these were the morgue shots of the victims of the bombing. Perhaps there were a dozen prints. Different angles. A few of them included more than one of the victims.

I forced myself to look at the photos, one by one. Each one became more blurred by my tears. These horridly cold, brutally clinical photos of once beautiful, once alive and whole children, were burning into me trying to erase the picture of the four children I had carried in my mind for 14 years.

Chambliss’s victims, clockwise from top left: Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Denise McNair).

I had been able to close my eyes and see the smiling faces from photographs that became so well-known after their deaths. The photos used in a plaque mounted in the sanctuary on a wall near the church altar. Those smiling faces had protected me from the other pictures I had in my mind all those years of the scenes we had watched on television of the shrouded bodies being brought—one by one—from the rubble that had been their church.

I had wept the morning they had died. I had wanted Robert to bear the public shame of his acts all those years and had tried in every way I had known to help bring that about, but this — this was — oh, God, the facts. I looked at the pictures, tears welling into my eyes and running down my cheeks. I handed them back to Jon. He didn’t speak, but he watched me and waited.

“I’m ready,” I told him, and I left the room. I managed to get into my car and start the engine before my control broke. I could no longer contain the flood of emotion. This was not simple grief, this was not just shock, this was not limited to anger. This was years of pent-up rage and pain.

I can remember to this day, as I write 17 years later, how the streets looked as I drove home in the darkness, the lights blindingly bright as they were refracted through my tears. I can hear in my ears that voice that was my own — screaming, keening, and crying out to God in sorrow, in rage; railing at the injustice, the cruelty, and at the guilt of impotence: to have not known what to do when it might have made a difference.

Memory can be a blessed tool or it can be a crippling burden. In work and in school my ability to recall detail and even verbatim conversations had been valuable to me. And though I had spent several years pushing the memories of the Sixties into a contained place so that I could live and be productive, they flooded back. Vivid, detailed, and absolute.

When I arrived home, I was drained. Perhaps I felt purged. I think that I thought the release of those emotions would strengthen me and that the coming days would provide healing of the wounds, for myself and for others.

I still could not discuss the case with other people, and all I wanted to do was to shout in accusation at a city, a system, a people who could allow — not just allow — but also accept such atrocities.

I wanted to tear it up and put it back together right. I used the weekend to pull myself together. I conducted the regular worship service in my church on Sunday, quietly prepared my son for the inevitable, and slept little.

The trial began on Monday morning; Robert Chambliss would stand trial for one count of murder. They would try him on only one count, explaining that, “If something goes wrong on this, we’ll immediately arrest him on another count.” The victim named in the charge was 11-year-old Denise McNair.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

Sunday, September 15, 1963, started like a lot of Sundays. I lived with my son and my grandmother in her home at 2320 Thirty-fifth Avenue North, and none of us got up to go to church that morning. Mama Katie was only 69 years old, but she suffered greatly from arthritis. We had gotten up at a leisurely hour and had put together an informal breakfast. My Uncle Howard often dropped off his children at the Thirty-fifth Avenue Baptist Church and came by to visit until it was time to pick them up.

Our television set was black-and-white, and the boxy cabinet was on wheels. We had pushed it into Mama Katie’s bedroom the evening before so that she could watch it from either her bed or rocking chair. She had watched one of the television preachers that morning and had been up for a while before she came out to the kitchen to drink a cup of coffee. She had left the television on, and we could hear it in the background while we talked.

We abruptly stopped talking and exchanged looks of question and worry when we heard and felt the rumbling vibration of — what — a bombing? Usually they happened at night. In the dark. This was Sunday. It was broad daylight. My stomach tightened as we decided that perhaps it was at ACIPCO or U.S. Pipe, two huge foundries a mile or so distant, one to the east, the other to the west.

Minutes passed, and other than the distant whine of a siren we heard nothing. Then we heard a voice on the television saying there had been an explosion, and I think it said “apparently a bomb.”A special report would follow. We turned up the volume on the television and listened to the reports about and from the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. At first the voice-over was matter-of-fact, but it took on a somber note as the scene unfolded. There on the screen was the church building, with crowds of onlookers, fire trucks and police cars, and police officers with shotguns. The camera eventually focused on a gaping hole in the side of the building; rubble and pieces of the building were strewn across the sidewalk and on automobiles battered by the blast.

Instantly I knew that Robert had been in some way involved. It was a gut-level knowing that couldn’t be shaken, but couldn’t be proven either. It came from how we had grown to know that he was usually “on the road” or “at a meeting” when something happened.

We spent the rest of the day watching the reports. The voice on the television said that several people had been injured by flying debris. The minister, the Reverend John Cross, had a bullhorn and called for calm, trying to keep his people from losing self-control. At one point he seemed to be weeping, as were many others. Reverend Cross helped dig through the rubble, and we watched as a small body, wrapped in a white sheet, was brought out on a gurney.

We wept and groaned as the small bodies were removed, one by one, from the rubble, through that huge hole in the wall where windows and concrete steps had been, and across the crater in the ground where dirt and the sidewalk had been blown away to a depth of two and one-half feet, and more than five feet wide.

Mangled stained glass window, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Credit: Alabama v. Chambliss Trial Transcript, Collection 85, Archives Department, Birmingham Public Library.

Firemen and ambulance attendants stumbled and struggled across that chasm bearing their burdens: children. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. One, only one, was alive. That morning a special service had been underway at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. The youth were taking on responsibilities usually reserved for adults, and five girls were in the ladies’ lounge preparing to take their places in the worship service. They were combing hair, primping; one was tying the sash of another’s dress. They were excited. They were nervous. They were happy.

Then the wall caved in. Pieces of the 30-inch-thick stone and concrete wall, metal security grating, and the glass and wood of the window filled the room with the impact of the explosion. The opposite wall of the room disappeared as debris traveled through the superheated air forced out from the center of the detonated bomb.

Damaged basement wall and missing window of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Credit: Alabama v. Chambliss Trial Transcript, Collection 85, Archives Department, Birmingham Public Library.

Four of the children were found in one place, felled by the wall as it came in: Denise McNair, age 11; Addie Mae Collins, age 14; Carole Robertson, age 14; and Cynthia Wesley, age 14. A few feet away, they found 11-year-old Sarah Collins, Addie Mae’s sister, buried under the stone and glass. She was alive, but just barely.

Police stand guard while firefighters and church members search for victims. Credit: Alabama v. Chambliss Trial Transcript, Collection 85, Archives Department, Birmingham Public Library.

Earlier that morning, at about the time these girls had been arriving at their church, my cousin, 11-year-old Kathy Hillhouse, had also gotten ready to go to Sunday school. She was going to walk to Thirty-fifth Avenue Baptist Church a block away from her home. She was running late, and as she rushed out of the front door a man came up the porch steps. He was not a stranger to her, but he was a man she did not know well, so at first glance she did not recognize him. He was wearing dress trousers, a white shirt, and tie, and he told her he wanted to talk to her mother and father. Kathy turned in the doorway and called out, “Mother! There’s a man here wants to talk to you.”

Her father, Jim Hillhouse, was at work at Reid’s Service Station on Seventh Street. My Aunt Viola came to the door, and when she saw who was on the porch, she pulled Kathy back inside the house.

“Mother, I’m going to be late,” Kathy complained, trying to pull away from her mother’s grasp on her arm.

“You’re not going anywhere, go back inside,” Viola snapped, pushing Kathy into the house. Viola went out onto the porch, and she and the man sat in the porch swing for several minutes talking. As they talked, Kathy realized that this man was at Robert Chambliss’s house occasionally and lived only a few blocks up the hill toward Fairmont behind the Hillhouse home. She had seen his children at church, although they were older than she. She had not recognized him at first, because every other time she had seen Floyd Garrett he had had on his distinctive Birmingham police department uniform with badge, gun belt, and billy stick.

He finally left, and Viola came back inside. She was upset and crying. After she had fretted for a short while she telephoned Dale Tarrant. Kathy listened as Viola told Dale about the man’s visit and what had been said. Kathy heard her mother saying that he had told her that a bomb was at the church and that she was to “keep your damned mouth shut. If anybody asks, you don’t know anything. Understand?” He had further threatened that if she told anything she knew “we will put it on Jim.” After the man left, he went to his own home. He had apparently been on his way home but felt it imperative that he stop off and warn Viola into silence along the way. He had worked 3 p.m. until 11 p.m. Saturday and had been out all night.

At home Garrett changed clothes and, according to his statement later to the FBI, fed his dogs. He told FBI agents that his children went to Sunday school, and he said his wife left for church at 10 a.m. He said that he was called at 10:30 a.m. by the police dispatcher and told to come to work because of the bombing; the church was in his regular patrol beat. He told the FBI that he went to the Thirty-fifth Avenue Baptist Church to tell his wife he was going to work and then went to see his uncle Robert Chambliss. Robert told the FBI that this man, Floyd Garrett, had on “work clothes” when he came by the Chambliss house shortly after 10:30 a.m.. Both Chambliss and Garrett said he had come by to borrow a shotgun to use in riot control because his own had jammed. Chambliss did not have a shotgun, so Garrett left without one.

Garrett said he got into uniform at the station and Sergeant Jones unjammed his shotgun for him. By the time the FBI questioned Garrett several days later, they knew that the bomb had been on a crude timing device. They also had a description of a car with white men in it near the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church at 2 a.m. that Sunday morning.

Garrett’s alibi for the time the bomb was placed was that he had picked up his girlfriend at midnight, had taken her to buy groceries (at a supermarket a few blocks from the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church), and had then spent time with her until he went home early that morning. He did not tell the FBI that he had gone by the Hillhouse home. His story would be somewhat different when he testified as a defense witness in 1977. Under oath, he said that he had gone home from work when he got off at 11 p.m. Saturday night, that he was still asleep when the dispatcher called, and that his wife had woken him up.

Questions. So many questions. The first question was how? Robert was at home when the bomb had exploded. I was so naive that I did not understand timers and drip buckets —  yet.

When Floyd Garrett was questioned by the FBI, no one seemed to think it strange that a police officer would need to “borrow a shotgun” to go “on duty” when the police department furnished arms. In fact, he told his superior officer, Captain Maurice House, that he had gone by to see if Chambliss was home because he was suspicious of Chambliss. And apparently it was months later before anyone thought to ask Garrett about his uniform — a man who was so impressed with his uniform that in the ten years he had been on the force, he was seldom seen out of it. Yet that morning, he was “on his way to work” when he went to see Chambliss but didn’t have on his uniform.

Could it have been that he had to go to Chambliss to get his uniform before he could go to work? There were reported sightings of “policemen” not in police cars the night before the bombing.

Tee and Mama Katie and I had spoken on the telephone a few minutes after we heard the explosion. I called Tee later in the afternoon, and Robert was gone, but she again affirmed he had been home when it happened. It had become almost routine to check and see if Robert was at home when a bomb exploded in Birmingham. Many times, he would leave the house, and within an hour there would be a blast.

Attorney David Vann, who would later become mayor of Birmingham, said he saw Robert at the scene of the bombing that afternoon in the crowd. The witness who had seen white men in a car at 2 am also saw the same car circling the area several times that afternoon. Were Robert and the others admiring their work?

Mama Katie fretted so that by mid-afternoon she took to bed and stayed there for several days. Her arthritis was apparently irritated by the circumstances and, I think, a profound sadness bound up in fear.

There was a lot of talk on the telephone that day, but no one voiced any open accusations despite whispered speculations. I can only guess at events in and around the Chambliss home that afternoon because I stayed away. I stayed home, watching the television, taking care of Mama Katie and Robin, and worrying.

During the afternoon two more black children died in other, separate incidents in Birmingham: Virgil Ware was shot on his bicycle by two white youths on a motorcycle, and Johnny Robinson was shot in the back by a policeman for throwing rocks at a car loaded with catcalling white youths displaying Confederate flags.

The juveniles who killed Ware were identified from photos taken at an NSRP rally that afternoon. One pleaded guilty to manslaughter; the other was convicted at trial. They each received seven-month suspended sentences.

Officer Jack Parker said he was firing at the feet of Johnny Robinson and his companion — with a shotgun — at 100 feet, and he was surprised when the youngster “appeared to stumble and fall.”

Early that evening, our doorbell rang. I stepped into the hallway and saw Robert was standing on the porch. We had opened the wooden inside door for air circulation, but we kept the glass-and-aluminum storm door locked, so I saw Robert without him seeing me in the darkened hallway. I turned and went back to my grandmother to ask what she wanted me to do. She told me not to let him in. We were actually afraid of him at that moment, afraid that we could not hide our certainty that he had set that bomb.

I went to the door and spoke to Robert through the screen, wondering how I was supposed to keep him from entering the house, knowing that he had always done what he wanted. He came and went as he pleased, and I had certainly never barred him. There was conscious fear that he would notice behavior that wasn’t “normal” and that thinking we might “tell on him,” he would do something to us. He said that Tee wanted to know how Mama Katie was doing, and he wanted to see if we needed any help. He took hold of the door handle to pull it open, expecting me to unlock it to him. I ignored his hand as I told him that she was in bed and had said that she didn’t want any company because she was trying hard to go to sleep. I don’t know who was most lame in that exchange. It was obvious that he had come by in person to gauge our reaction to the bombing rather than calling us on the phone to check on Mama Katie, and it was obvious that I was making excuses to send him away.

He hesitated, and I saw anger cross his face. After a moment, he ran a hand through his hair, ducked his head, and grinned, saying, “If  y’all need us, call.”

He turned, went across the concrete porch he had worked so hard helping to pour several years earlier, and down the three steps to the sidewalk that split the front lawn. He looked back once as he got into his car parked at the curb.

During the days that followed, the tension was thick in both the city and among Chambliss family members. Conversations were guarded, and yet everyone attempted to behave as though everything were normal. The greatest fear was that Robert would become angry and lash out if he thought anyone might speak out against him. There was no one to tell of our suspicions, though, and no proof.

During the following week, the Sunday morning bombing was a regular item in news broadcasts, reward monies were increased, and the investigation continued. The FBI was brought in because of indications of possible police involvement, and even though local FBI agents had gone to the scene almost immediately, J. Edgar Hoover sent in additional men.

The next Saturday afternoon, September 21, I visited Tee again. I was in the Chambliss living room when the evening news came on the television and Robert came into the room, sitting down on the sofa to watch. I was sitting in a chair near the front door, and although there were other family members in the house, only the two of us were in the dimly lit front room at the time. I don’t think Robert even realized that I was there.

He leaned toward the television across the room. The news anchorman was updating the story of the bombing and stated that murder charges were being considered rather than the lesser charge of bombing or even bombing of an occupied building. Robert spoke, apparently to the man on the screen, saying, “It wasn’t meant to hurt anybody. It didn’t go off when it was supposed to.”

Police investigators. Credit: Alabama v. Chambliss Trial Transcript, Collection 85, Archives Department, Birmingham Public Library.

He looked and sounded upset as though pleading to be believed. It struck me that he may not have meant to have anyone, especially children, killed in the blast, yet wasn’t there always that danger when they planted explosives? Was he speaking for himself or from a knowledge of the mind and motives of some others who were guilty? After that evening I never doubted that he had, in fact, been responsible for those deaths because he had known exactly when and where the bomb was supposed to explode. I felt certain that he had either put the dynamite in place and set the timer with his own hand, or he knew the hand that had. And he could have called a warning when the planned explosion time passed and there were people in the building. He seemed to want it understood that they had believed the bomb had failed to detonate or that it had been discovered, so they sat back and kept quiet.

In subsequent days, Robert’s remarks were more guarded and angry, and they often came in the form of criticism of others. Where he had, in the past, laughed about arguing with Troy Ingram over which of them was the better bomb-maker and claiming that Troy was just a braggart, now he would snarl comments about Troy and renounce his stupidity. His anger seemed to be directed toward J. B. Stoner, Ed Fields, and other National States Rights Party men, as well as his “buddies” and Robert Thomas, Grand Dragon of Eastview Klavern 13. He spoke with Robert Shelton several times (or said he did) but later expressed anger that he couldn’t reach Shelton when he wanted to. He expressed fear that Robert Thomas was going to “put me and [Herman Frank] Cash, [Thomas] Blanton, and [Bobby Frank] Cherry in the electric chair.”

Between September 15 and 29, when the state would make a move against them, the Klansmen were not sitting back quietly. They were still at work. The same day that Robert had talked to the television saying that the bomb didn’t go off when it was supposed to, a fellow Klansman brought a friend of his named Billy to the Chambliss home to meet Robert. Billy wanted to join the Klan. He had been in on sessions at a downtown sign shop making Confederate flags and protest signs for NSRP and wanted to do more.

I didn’t know who those two visitors were, but I knew that it was Klan business. They talked in the living room away from family members. The next day (September 22), the Cahaba Boys had another of their Sunday meetings near the Cahaba River bridge on Highway 280. A young Klansman named Tommy Blanton, Jr., met Billy and took him to this meeting.

Later statements by Billy indicate that some sort of pledge or oath was signed that day by the dozen or so men present. By the time the group had gotten back to Troy Ingram’s house, Billy was frightened and intimidated. During the next few years, Billy’s story changed several times about what happened that Sunday, how long he was in the Klan, and how active he was in Klan activities.

Two nights later, Tuesday, September 24, the Center Street home of attorney Arthur Shores was bombed again, this time with two bombs. One exploded very near the house, and a crowd started to gather by the time the police arrived. The second bomb, rigged for delayed detonation, had been placed nearer the curb; it exploded and threw potentially deadly shrapnel through the neighborhood, endangering the people who were gathering and police officers responding to the initial incident.

On Thursday, September 26, Charles Cagle took FBI agents to a field near Gardendale (north of Birmingham) to show them where he and John Wesley Hall had hidden the dynamite they had taken from Robert Chambliss’s car the night of September 4. The field was empty.

During the last few days of September, several meetings took place at the St. Francis Motel in Homewood, a bedroom community just south of Birmingham. Alabama Highway Patrol Colonel Al Lingo used the motel as his Birmingham headquarters in the Sixties. It was a convenient meeting place for clandestine notables; Colonel Lingo, head of the Alabama Highway Patrol, was the state’s top law enforcement officer and answered directly to Governor George Wallace. The St. Francis was a midscale place with just enough glitz to avoid being suspect of renting hourly rooms.

One meeting of particular note for my story took place on September 29, 1963, in Colonel Al Lingo’s room. I know this because much later, in January 1978, I was doing research in the Birmingham Public Library preparing a paper for a class at Birmingham-Southern College during the winter mini-term. As I entered the archives department, a classmate who was working there as an intern called me aside and, whispering, led me to a small room where there were a number of boxes filled with papers. She explained that the papers, files from Mayor Albert Boutwell’s office, were discovered in the attic of old Fire Station No.1, which had been closed by the city and cleaned out. The papers had not been sorted or archived by library personnel, and she left me with them without informing her supervisors.

I made many notes as I went through copies of police reports, surveillance reports, and notations from 1963 to 1965. I photocopied one that read:

Persons in attendance at meeting in Colonel Al Lingo’s room at St.

Francis Motel September 29, 1963:

Colonel Al Lingo

Major William R. Jones

Bill Morgan (United Americans for Conservative Government)

Herbert Eugene Reeves, a Klansman

Robert Thomas, a Klansman

Wade Wallace, distant relative of Governor Wallace

Art Hanes, former mayor

Robert Shelton, Imperial Wizard, KKK

Hubert Page, a Klansman

Don Luna, a Klansman

Same persons listed in above group, including Robert Shelton and Art Hanes, were also present at the Alabama Highway Patrol Office later in the evening.

Persons picked up for questioning on evening of September 29, 1963:

Ross Keith

Levi “‘QuickDraw” Yarbrough

Robert “”Dynamite” Chambliss

John Wesley Hall (“Nigger” Hall)

Charles Cagle

On September 30, 1963, Captain Bob Godwin took Hubert Page, a Klansman, to Huntsville, Alabama, where he was given a polygraph examination by a deputy sheriff.

Don Luna accompanied state investigator Posey, and these two men knocked on Robert Chambliss’s front door on the evening of September 29, 1963, in a joint operation.

“In a joint operation:” Evidently, an agreement was struck that night, and a plan was made. Robert Shelton had told Robert Chambliss “not to worry, the Klan would take care of him.” But during the evening Robert had worried and was so agitated he had an acute attack of a chronic stomach problem. The doctor was summoned to make a house call. Robert was medicated and sedated into rest, until the doorbell rang late that night. Alabama Highway Patrol investigator Posey and Don Luna, a fellow Klansman, were on the porch. Don assured Robert that they would “get him out of it” as the trooper placed Robert under arrest and took him into custody. No search of the house was made; the arrest was quiet and expected.

Along with Robert, John Wesley “”Nigger” Hall and Charles Cagle were later charged with the minor crime of “illegal transportation and possession of dynamite,” a misdemeanor. The maximum sentence was six months in jail and a fine.

Robert often stated afterward that he “passed” a polygraph, but he was so heavily sedated that he almost went to sleep in the chair and was virtually unable to coherently answer questions. Robert Shelton was at  the highway patrol headquarters that night when the men were questioned. He told Robert to “keep the Klan out of it.”

Chambliss, Hall, and Cagle stood trial and were convicted. They appealed the conviction and were cleared of the charges. It was clear then and is now that the deal struck between the State of Alabama and the Klan leadership was to foil the possibility of the FBI investigations progressing. Whatever evidence the city or state had was effectively tied up by these charges, and it would be possible to delay whatever action the FBI might attempt. The charges by the State of Alabama had simply muddied the waters. Charges brought against Chambliss, Hall, and Cagle had no connection to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing case at all; the charges stemmed from their September 4 movement of dynamite.

When the kudzu field on Mockingbird Lane near Gardendale was checked on September 26 by FBI agents guided by Charles Cagle, no dynamite was found. On October 1, however, Alabama Highway Patrol Colonel Al Lingo, Major Bill Jones, Investigator Ben Allen, and Birmingham Police Captain Joseph McDowell took Cagle back and “discovered” a box containing 130 sticks of dynamite — at the same location.

Captain W. E. Berry of the Birmingham fire department was called to handle the explosives. In his report he stated that the ground under the box was not discolored, indicating that it had only been there a short time, and that the box was “bone dry,” indicating that it had not been there on September 28, the last time it had rained in the area.

On October 4, Birmingham Police Captain McDowell took FBI agents to the spot where the state officers had discovered their box of dynamite, confirming it to be the same location the FBI agents had checked with Cagle on September 26.

The state had made their arrests and had produced their evidence, while the “joint operation” ensured that the arrested would eventually be cleared.

Pews and windows. Credit: Alabama v. Chambliss Trial Transcript, Collection 85, Archives Department, Birmingham Public Library.