Volume 2, No. 1 (January, 1992) pp. 21-22
UNTIL JUSTICE ROLLS DOWN by Frank Sikora. Tuscaloosa, AL: The
University of Alabama Press, 1991. Pp.175.
Reviewed by Deborah Barrow (Auburn University)
UNTIL JUSTICE ROLLS DOWN is a fascinating account of the story
behind the fourteen year quest to find the Klansmen responsible
for the tragic bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in
Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 that took the lives of four young
black girls. Frank Sikora, undoubtedly aided by his long term
experience as a journalist with the Birmingham NEWS, uses a
descriptive approach reminiscent of Richard Kluger's SIMPLE
JUSTICE to portray with great success the intensity of the war
against desegregation that rocked Birmingham in 1963. More
important, Sikora uses this technique like a good artist,
building with each line a graphic portrait of the racial hatred
that forms a vivid social- psychological profile of the members
of the Klan and their families.
Against the backdrop of explosive events such as George Wallace's
stand in the school house door to prevent integration at the
University of Alabama, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
decisions calling for desegregation in the Birmingham schools and
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.'s targeting Birmingham which he
called the most segregated southern city for intensive protest,
the Klan and other white supremacists engaged in a spree of
violence that was perhaps the worst of the 1960s. On Sunday
morning, September 15, 1963, five teenage girls were in the
women's lounge located in the basement of the Sixteenth Street
Baptist Church's tieing one another's sashes, washing their hands
and freshening up before joining the congregation upstairs in
their special role that day as ushers. Just minutes before they
were expected upstairs, a bomb, containing as many as 15 sticks
of dynamite that had been placed under exterior steps near the
entrance to the basement, exploded killing all but one of the
girls. The bomb had shattered a thirty-inch wall of brick and
stone, mutilating the bodies of the young girls. Over the next
five years the FBI launched "the most intense probe since
the search for gangland figure John Dillinger in the 1930's"
(p.20). Despite the effort, no one was charged with the bombing
and because the FBI's jurisdiction was triggered under a
Reconstruction Act for civil rights violations, the FBI closed
its investigation in 1968 when the statute of limitations became
effective.
Sikora spends time in the first third of the book taking the
reader through the tragedy itself, making real the families and
their grief. For the remainder of the story he does an equally
compelling job of bringing the reader to understand the people
who ultimately would confront one another in a dramatic trial.
The first of these personalities, and the one responsible for
resuming the closed case and obtaining the requisite permission
for the FBI files, was William J. Baxley. As the newly-elected
Attorney General of Alabama in 1971 Baxley focused his attention
immediately upon reopening the case. Baxley had made a pledge to
himself in his last year of law school as he witnessed the depth
of racial hatred around him and then heard the news of the
bombing that he "was going to do something about it"
(p.39).
Page 22 follows:
True to his vow, once in office he not only hired the first black
attorney and the first black woman attorney to serve with the
state attorney general's office as well as the first black
assistant attorney general, Myron Thompson, who would later
become a federal district judge, but he also made resolution of
the 1963 bombing case a top priority. Indeed, the case became
"the controlling force in Baxley's life" (p.40). Good
intentions and efforts notwithstanding, the case languished
unresolved for another six years. All of this would change when
Baxley hired an attorney in 1976 named Bob Eddy. In January 1977,
Eddy checked into the Holiday Inn in Birmingham and when he left
ten months later he had -- through dogged persistence and a
remarkable talent for sleuthing, bolstered by a persuasive yet
unassuming style -- successfully unraveled the mystery
surrounding the incident. In the course of the year Eddy entered
into the bizarre and clandestine world of the Ku Klux Klan. The
odyssey brought him face to face with the individuals whose
pathos were the essence of the hatred preached by the
organization as well as victims who lived closely to it either
from ignorance or fear.
Eventually, Baxley and Eddy, with the help of a courageous
witness, were able to obtain the conviction of seventy-three year
old Robert Chambliss, marking the first racially-motivated murder
conviction in a southern state. In the process of putting
together the Chambliss case, Baxley's office also obtained enough
evidence against avowed white supremacist J.B. Stoner to convict
him as well. Although Eddy knew that others were involved, after
14 years Chambliss was the only one against whom a case could be
made.
Sikora's book is not an analytical treatment of its subject, so
one would not want to read it with that expectation. However, it
is an exceptionally well-told account of a very significant
episode in the history of the struggle for racial equality in the
South. The book also does more than preserve a slice of history.
It gives great insight into the mind set of white supremacists
and the nature of the organizations that advance that cause. That
in itself makes the book important because ironically, the bulk
of Klan cases taken to federal court along with the success in
dismantling these organizations has occurred since the time of
the Chambliss trial.
Copyright 1992