Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr.
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Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. (June 20, 1938 – June 26, 2020) was an American terrorist and convicted felon, formerly serving four life sentences for his role as conspirator in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in
Birmingham, Alabama Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of Alabama, United States. It is the county seat of Jefferson County, Alabama, Jefferson County. The population was 200,733 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List ...
, on September 15, 1963, which killed four
African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...
girls (Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins, and Denise McNair). Blanton, along with Bobby Frank Cherry, was convicted in May 2001 in a highly publicized trial of the cold case. Future
United States Senator The United States Senate consists of 100 members, two from each of the 50 U.S. state, states. This list includes all senators serving in the 119th United States Congress. Party affiliation Independent Senators Angus King of Maine and Berni ...
Doug Jones successfully prosecuted Blanton and Cherry.


Early life

Blanton was born in Washington, D.C., on June 20, 1938, and was the son of Thomas Edwin "Pops" Blanton Sr., who was described in 2001 as a notorious racist in the Birmingham, Alabama, area.


Education and career

Blanton had a tenth-grade education and served as an aircraft mechanic in the
Navy A navy, naval force, military maritime fleet, war navy, or maritime force is the military branch, branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare, naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral z ...
from 1956 to 1959. Blanton was a member of the
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to KKK or Klan, is an American Protestant-led Christian terrorism, Christian extremist, white supremacist, Right-wing terrorism, far-right hate group. It was founded in 1865 during Reconstruction era, ...
in the early 1960s, along with the other suspects in the bombing.


Trial and imprisonment

At the time of his arrest, Blanton was working at a
Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores in the United States and 23 other ...
store and he was living in a trailer with no running water. Blanton was a suspect from early in the investigation, but J. Edgar Hoover prevented attempts by the Birmingham office or the
Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...
to bring charges against Blanton and three other men. This was reportedly because Hoover thought a successful prosecution was unlikely. In a jury trial in 2001, Blanton was prosecuted by the state, and convicted of murder. He was sentenced to four life sentences in state prison. He was housed at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. Blanton went before the parole board on August 3, 2016. Parole was denied and deferred until 2021.


Death

On June 26, 2020, Blanton died at William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility after 19 years of incarceration, from unspecified causes while serving his life sentence, six days after his 82nd birthday.Thomas Blanton, 16th Street Baptist Church bomber, dies in prison
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See also

*
African-American history African-American history started with the forced transportation of List of ethnic groups of Africa, Africans to North America in the 16th and 17th centuries. The European colonization of the Americas, and the resulting Atlantic slave trade, ...
* Civil rights movement *
Birmingham campaign The Birmingham campaign, also known as the Birmingham movement or Birmingham confrontation, was an American movement organized in early 1963 by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to bring attention to the integration efforts ...
*
Mass racial violence in the United States In the broader context of racism in the United States, mass racial violence in the United States consists of ethnic conflicts and race riots, along with such events as: * Racially based targeted attacks against African Americans by White Ameri ...


Further reading

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Blanton, Thomas Edwin Jr. 1930 births 2020 deaths American Ku Klux Klan members convicted of murder American mass murderers American murderers of children American prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment Bombers (people) Criminals from Washington, D.C. Former Ku Klux Klan members History of Birmingham, Alabama Military personnel from Washington, D.C. People convicted of murder by Alabama People from Springville, Alabama Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by Alabama Prisoners who died in Alabama detention United States Navy sailors