SM Gibson

November 16, 2014

(TheAntiMedia) When Reverend John Cross Jr. placed his head upon his pillow on a Saturday night in September of 1963, he was presumably thinking about the sermon which he was meant to deliver the next morning like he had done countless times before. Little did Rev. Cross know, his congregation and the building in which he ministered would be worldwide headlines within 24 hours.

At approximately 10:22 A.M. on September 15, 1963, as children were making their way into the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama for a Sunday School lesson entitled “The Love That Forgives”, a bomb erupted which took the lives of 4 little girls and caused injury to almost 20 other church members.

Robert Edward Chambliss, a member of the Klu Klux Klan, was identified by a witness as the one who placed the bomb underneath the stairs of the church. Chambliss was arrested for the crime, but was only charged with possessing a box of 122 sticks of dynamite without a permit. Less than one month later on October 8th, Chambliss received a fine of one-hundred dollars and a six month sentence behind bars for possessing the dynamite. No federal charges were filed on him at the time.

The case was closed until 1971 when newly elected Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley reopened the case. It wasn’t until 1977 that Chambliss was brought to trial where he was found guilty of the bombing and sentenced to life in prison. He was 73 years old at the time.

Chambliss died in late October of 1985 at Lloyd Noland Hospital and Health Center.

On the same day as the 16th Street bombing, an additional two young boys were shot down as martyrs in Birmingham.

Johnny Robinson,16, was participating in a youth demonstration in the aftermath of the bombing when white youths drove past the impromptu protest. The boys in the vehicle were spewing hate and racial slurs while hurling glass soda bottles toward Robinson and the other young demonstrators. According to reports, the car was covered in a confederate flag.

Witnesses say Johnny responded by throwing rocks in the direction of his harassers. That is when police arrived on the scene.

As the patrol car rolled past the scene of the altercation, Birmingham Police Officer Jack Parker looked on from the back seat of the vehicle. The vehicle stopped and blocked an alley way where the black youths were now located. Officer Parker raised a shotgun and aimed it out of the back window of the police cruiser. The boys turned around and began dispersing.

Two shots were fired by Officer Parker. The shotgun blasts struck Johnny in the back as he fled.

Police claim that it could have been an accident saying that the driver slammed on the brakes which caused the officer to discharge the weapon. Another report claims that the police car hit a bump which caused the firearm to accidentally fire.

Eyewitness reports tell a different story.

According to witness accounts, two shots were fired by the officer from the back of the patrol car with no warning.

Despite an unarmed youth being killed by being shot in the back by a police officer, no one was ever prosecuted for Johnny’s death.

Virgil Ware, 13, was also shot in the aftermath of the 16th Street Church’s bombing. While riding on the handlebars of his brother James bicycle that infamous Sunday, Virgil was fatally shot by white teens who were also Eagle Scouts. The Scouts were on their way back from a segregationist rally when they encountered the Ware brothers.

Larry Sims, who was in possession of friend Michael Farley’s gun, stated that he and Farley were attempting to scare the brothers. Sims shot twice in the direction of the bicycle, striking Virgil in the chest and cheek.

Virgil died in his brothers arms next to the bicycle they had just been casually riding.

16 year old’s Sims and Farley were convicted of second-degree manslaughter, but had their original sentence of seven months in jail suspended. The two boys served two years probation for murdering Virgil in cold blood that September day.

It should be noted again that all of these death’s happened in one day. Sadly, by the time this day of bloodshed and carnage took place, Birmingham had gotten use to the news of violence within its city limits.

There were 40 plus unsolved bombings that took place in Birmingham between the late 40s and the mid 60s.

The violence became so regular in Birmingham that the “Magic City” began being referred to as “Bombingham”. A neighborhood within the city’s limits which surrounded Center Street, which was a dividing line between the city’s segregated housing, suffered so much from frequent bombings that the area was bequeathed the informal name of “Dynamite Hill”.

The U.S. government has in recent years taken to throwing the word terrorism around in an attempt to coerce the American people into condoning war and an empirical foreign policy. Most of these fears are completely unwarranted and unfounded. The government doesn’t want you to know what real terrorism looks like.

Birmingham was real terrorism.

The oppressed did not respond to violence with violence. Birmingham chose a different approach. The victims of violence chose peace. A people surmounted their oppressors by standing united.

Leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Reverend Ralph Abernathy, and Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, not to mention the countless others, stared directly into the face of evil and conquered it through the tactics of peace.

Whether it was children being attacked by German Shepherds in Kelly Ingram Park or watching the police mow down innocents with water hoses on 4th Avenue, the people never deterred from their mission.

When peaceful protestors filled segregated parks in protest, Bull Connor, the city commissioner at the time, and his badged goons would have loved nothing more than for people to respond with brutality. This would have justified, at least in their wicked minds, to start mowing people down with bullets instead of a constant stream of water.

The people refrained from violence. They held strong. They never wavered but held firm in their unity because they were on the side of the moral right.

Remember the words that were joyfully sung on the streets of Birmingham in 1963 despite being a people faced with overwhelming obstacles of force in the way of their justice. “We shall overcome.”

Birmingham overcame.

Ferguson, if you hold close and secure the foundations of peace, you shall overcome as well.

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