Bill Baxley and 16th Street Baptist Church prosecution story
A young law student’s vow became a landmark conviction that forced Alabama to confront a defining atrocity of the civil rights era.
The horrendous 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, where four innocent little Black girls were murdered, was one of the most horrendous and unconscionable events to occur in Alabama. These little girls were innocently attending Sunday School at their church and were killed only because of the color of their skin.
This horrific bombing shocked the nation and touched the souls of all Americans, especially white southerners, who became more retrospective after that date.
One of those young, white Southerners was a 22-year-old law student at the University of Alabama named Bill Baxley. He was watching the news at his fraternity house that day when it came on television as a special report. He was so upset and sickened that he could not eat for two days. He vowed that one day he would do all within his power to right this horrific wrong.
Baxley was about to become a lawyer, and return to Dothan to practice law in his daddy, Keener Baxley’s courtroom. As a young law student or even a young lawyer, he assumed the most he could contribute would be as an errand boy or assistant to the prosecutors. Baxley was willing to spend a year as an understudy to help bring these Klansmen-thugs to justice. Litte did he know that a few years later, he would be elected Attorney General of Alabama and would be in the prime position to fulfill his vow.
This week marks the 63rd anniversary of one of the worst tragedies in Alabama history. On the Sunday morning of Sept. 15, 1963, four Klansmen bombed the former 16th Street Baptist church in downtown Birmingham. The historic church was the center for the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham and Alabama. The scenes where Bull Connor released dogs and firehoses on peaceful Civil Rights marchers was flashed across the national news nightly. If you look closely at the footage of these terrible scenes, which are still played today on file for historic purposes, you can tell that most of the demonstrators who are beaten, bitten by dogs or blown 50 yards in the air by powerful bursts from firehoses, are young people. Older African-Americans were working six days a week and could not participate.
These visions captured by the news media on television were more devasting to the white segregationist than Dr. Martin Luther King’s impassioned letter from a Birmingham jail. Those scenes were the impetus for the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill.
However, the tragic bombing of the church on a quiet, reverent Sunday morning, was the final nail in the coffin for the fight to defeat Civil Rights for all Americans.
Between that day, Sept. 15, 1963, and that same time 10 years later, Baxley, indeed, graduated law school at Alabama, went home to Dothan, became District Attorney at age 24, and was elected attorney general four years later in 1970 at age 28.
He served eight years as Attorney General of Alabama, 1970-1978, ran second for governor in 1978, came back to be elected lieutenant governor in 1982, and ran second, again, for governor in 1986.
Bill Baxley is considered to be the best prosecutorial attorney general in Alabama modern history. His progressive prosecutorial skills and accomplishments are unparalleled.
The first day that he became Attorney General, he wrote down the names of the four little girls who were killed at the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and looked at their names every day. He started work immediately and assigned his top investigators to the case. He set his sights on the Klansmen, who the FBI had assisted him in determining had done the cowardly, unfathomable act. He prosecuted and sent to prison for life the primary culprit in the act, Robert Chambliss. Baxley’s prosecution and conviction of Chambliss by an all-white jury came three years into his first term as attorney general in 1973.
Bill Baxley’s prosecution of the Klansman Chambliss is the highlight of his stellar and legendary career as Alabama Attorney General.
I recently filmed a four-part, three-hour series with Baxley on my television show, “Alabama Politics,” which can be viewed on YouTube. In part three, Baxley discusses and reveals the complete, inside detailed story of all the events and stories surrounding the prosecution of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. It culminates with the illumination that the legendary, remarkable, iconic Civil Rights hero, Fred Gray, was instrumental in the prosecution. Mr. Gray, who represented Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, still practices law in Macon County at age 96.
See you next week.
