Convicted 16th Street Church Bomber Dies In Prison

BIRMINGHAM, AL — Thomas Blanton, one of the men convicted of killing four Black girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham in 1963, died in in his prison cell at William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility on Friday. He was 82.

Blanton was one of three Ku Klux Klan members convicted in the bombing that killed 11-year-old Denise McNair, 14-year-old Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson.

Sen. Doug Jones, then the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, secured Blanton’s conviction nearly 40 years after the crime.

"Tommy Blanton is responsible for one of the darkest days in Alabama’s history, and he will go to his resting place without ever having atoned for his actions or apologizing to the countless people he hurt," Jones said Friday. "The fact that after the bombing, he went on to remain a free man for nearly four decades speaks to a broader systemic failure to hold him and his accomplices accountable. That he died at this moment, when the country is trying to reconcile the multi-generational failure to end systemic racism, seems fitting.

"However, what the families of those girls, and the entire community of Birmingham, do know today is that when we come together and demand justice, we can achieve it. At this moment in our nation when we have all come to realize that the journey to racial justice has taken far too long, we must come together. Tommy Blanton may be gone, but we still have work to do."

"That was a dark day that will never be forgotten in both Alabama’s history and that of our nation," Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement Friday. "Although his passing will never fully take away the pain or restore the loss of life, I pray on behalf of the loved ones of all involved that our entire state can continue taking steps forward to create a better Alabama for future generations."