Birmingham - An Alabama jury yesterday found a former Ku Klux Klansman guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths in 1963 of four black girls. They were killed in the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church, one of the most shocking crimes of the civil rights era.
Thomas Blanton jr (62) faces life in prison as a result of his conviction in connection with the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a meeting place for black civil rights protesters at the time. Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins, all aged 14, and Denise McNair (11) died in the blast.
Blanton had pleaded not guilty to the charges. Prosecutors had argued that Blanton was among a small group of Klansmen that planned and then carried out the bombing to intimidate the civil rights movement and keep Birmingham's segregation laws in place.