A special public presentation, “Justice Delayed, Not Justice Denied: The Prosecution of the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing Cases,” and the personal and historical impact of the 1963 events that took place in Birmingham will be held at Canterbury Center of Canterbury United Methodist Church, Sunday, September 8th at 4 p.m. Former Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley and Birmingham attorney and former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones will speak on their involvement to achieve justice.
Though Baxley, founder of the law firm Baxley, Dillard, McKnight & James, was in law school in 1963 and Jones was only 9 years old, they later devoutly pursued justice in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and Birmingham’s civil rights violence many years after the fact.
Bill Baxley reopened the bombing investigation after he took office as Alabama’s Attorney General in 1971, requesting evidence from the FBI and building trust with key witnesses who had been reluctant to testify in the first trial. The prosecutor had been a student at the University of Alabama when he heard about the bombing in 1963. “I wanted to do something, but I didn’t know what.”
Doug Jones, former United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama and founder of Jones & Hawley law firm in Birmingham, came to know Chris McNair, the father of Denise McNair, one of the girls killed in the bombing, and about 40 years after the tragedy, Jones led the prosecution of two of the former Ku Klux Klansmen responsible for the bombing. Jones represented McNair in his release from prison Thursday, Aug. 29.
The event is sponsored by the Birmingham Bar Association, the Magic City Bar Association, and Canterbury. The public is invited at no charge and there is no reserve seating. The Canterbury Center of Canterbury United Methodist Church is at 3350 Overbrook Road, Mountain Brook.
For more information, contact Laura Dabbs at laura.dabbs@canterburyumc.org or 871-4695
