Bending Toward Justice: The Birmingham Church Bombing that Changed the Course of Civil Rights

All Points Books. New. New All Points Books, 03/05/2019 New Bending Toward Justice chronicles the decades-long fight to avenge the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, culminating in Doug Jones' prosecution of the last living bombers On September 15, 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL was bombed, killing four young girls It was clear that white supremacists were responsible The community activists who gathered at the church had recently succeeded in desegregating Birmingham public schools, and this was an act of revenge

The girls did not die in vain; the public outrage brought on by this senseless tragedy was crucial to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 But who were the perpetrators? Alabamians would have to wait a long time to find out Due to reluctant witnesses and racial prejudice, the FBI closed the case without any indictments

But as Martin Luther King, Jr famously claimed, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice" When William Baxley became state Attorney General years later, he reopened the case, ultimately convicting one of the bombers in 1977 Another suspect passed away in 1994, and author Doug Jones himself prosecuted and convicted the final two perpetrators-a correction of an outrageous miscarriage of justice that was nearly forty years in the making

Bending Toward Justice is a detailed account of this key moment in our national struggle for equality and the long road to prosecuting those responsible for the tragedy, related by an author who played a major role in the investigation It is destined to become the next addition to our civil rights canon

Doug Jones is the first Democrat to win a US Senate election in Alabama since 1992 As US Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, Jones prosecuted two Ku Klux Klan members for their roles in the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, a racially-motivated act of terrorism that claimed the lives of four young girls and helped turn the tide in the struggle for civil rights He also secured an indictment against Centennial Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph