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Bending toward justice : the Birmingham church bombing that changed the course of civil rights  Cover Image Book Book

Bending toward justice : the Birmingham church bombing that changed the course of civil rights / U.S. Senator Doug Jones ; with Greg Truman ; foreword by Rick Bragg.

Summary:

"The story of the decades-long fight to bring justice to the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, culminating in Senator Doug Jones' prosecution of the last living bombers. On September 15, 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed. The blast killed four young girls and injured twenty-two others. The FBI suspected four particularly radical Ku Klux Klan members. Yet due to reluctant witnesses, a lack of physical evidence, and pervasive racial prejudice the case was closed without any indictments. But as Martin Luther King, Jr. famously expressed it, 'The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.' Years later, Alabama Attorney General William Baxley reopened the case, ultimately convicting one of the bombers in 1977. Another suspect passed away in 1994, and then-US Attorney Doug Jones tried and convicted the final two in 2001 and 2002. This represented the correction of an outrageous miscarriage of justice nearly forty years in the making. Jones went on to win election as Alabama's first Democratic Senator since 1992 in a dramatic race against Republican challenger Roy Moore. [This book] is a compulsively readable account of a key moment in our long national struggle for equality and justice, related by an author who played a major role in these events."--Dust jacket.

Record details

  • ISBN: 9781250201447
  • ISBN: 1250201446
  • Physical Description: xix, 363 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm
  • Edition: First edition.
  • Publisher: New York : All Points Books, 2019.

Content descriptions

General Note:
Includes index.
Formatted Contents Note:
Introduction: The arc of history -- The bombing -- Baxley -- Langford -- The job -- Rudolph -- Grand juries -- Sucker punched -- Blanton -- Politics and dementia -- Cherry -- Epiphanies -- Honoring the children -- One more chance -- Connecting the dots.
Subject: Jones, Doug (G. Douglas), 1954-
Trials (Murder) > Alabama > Birmingham.
16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, Birmingham, Ala., 1963.
African Americans > Civil rights > Alabama > Birmingham > History.
Birmingham (Ala.) > Race relations > History.

Available copies

  • 1 of 1 copy available at Kenton County.

Holds

  • 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
Show Only Available Copies
Location Call Number / Copy Notes Barcode Shelving Location Status Due Date
Covington Branch 323.1196 J76b 2019 (Text) 33126022609592 Adult Nonfiction Available -

  • Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2019 February #1

    On September 15, 1963, prosegregation terrorists set fire to the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL, killing four black girls—Addie May Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley—and injuring 22 others. For years no perpetrators faced justice. Jones, elected in December 2017 as Alabama's first Democratic U.S. senator since 1992, chronicles how that changed. He credits a quest for justice that Alabama Attorney General William Baxley launched in the 1970s. Jones closed the quest in 2000–02 as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, leading the prosecution of two remaining Ku Klux Klan bombers. Here, Jones presents a work that is part memoir, part history detailing his efforts to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators, while unfolding an account of how elected and appointed officials enforced Jim Crow laws in the 1960s and were complacent with white supremacy. VERDICT This poignant and powerful story tracks changes in Southern life since the 1960s, uncovering hard truths to correct America's moral compass with an understanding of the need for activism and political discourse to achieve social justice.—Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe

    Copyright 2019 Library Journal.

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