1113 Cahaba river
A group known as the “Cahaba River Boys” met under the Cahaba River Bridge on U.S. 280 to plan the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963.
When four girls walked into 16th Street Baptist Church in downtown Birmingham on Sept. 15, 1963, their fate had already been decided in a secret meeting south of town.
It was under a bridge crossing the Cahaba River — the bridge that is now an access road that runs parallel to U.S. 280 near Target — that Ku Klux Klansmen plotted an act of violence that would propel civil rights legislation in the months and years to come.
In the early 1960s, the self-proclaimed “Cahaba River Bridge Boys” knew that the FBI had bugged their houses, their cars and their Klavern meeting space, so they fled in secret to a graveled spot on the river to meet.
They were all members of the Eastview #13 Klavern in East Birmingham, but with FBI informants supposedly within the Klan, they didn’t know whom they could trust. So again, they escaped to the remote spot on the river.
Robert “Dynamite Bob” Chambliss, who would be convicted for the bombing in 1977, served as the primary organizer of the group, and only men he knew and trusted would gather there. They felt the Klavern wasn’t acting strongly enough with violence to stop desegregation and integration, so they took their hatred of blacks, Jews and Catholics into their own hands.
“It’s an open question whether they were secretly blessed by the Klavern,” said T.K. Thorne, who spent four years researching and writing the newly released book Last Chance for Justice about the conviction of the church bombers. “It could have been a way to have a group go out and do dirty business. Back in the 1960s, the Klan was a respected organization. Many people — including lawyers, judges, police officers, and even Supreme Court Justice [Hugo] Black — belonged to it. It was a matter of social climbing.”
Thorne also noted that the privacy of the location was in line psychologically with the Klan’s use of rituals and secret symbols.
From under the bridge, the group allegedly plotted beatings and acts of intimidation they called “missionary missions” and ultimately a bomb to be planted in the church that served as the hub of civil rights activity in Birmingham.
The explosion came mid-morning on Youth Sunday, Sept. 15, and killed Denise McNair, 11, and Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins, all 14.
When the FBI investigation of the bombing began, it turned to the Cahaba River group.
The originally targeted suspects for the bombing listed nine Cahaba Boys. For years, only Chambliss would face a conviction, and he remained silent about his co-conspirators until his death in 1985. It wasn’t until 2001 and 2002 that Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry were at long last convicted for the crime following a five-year investigation by FBI and local police.
In fact, the key piece of evidence that convicted Blanton and Cherry involved the spot under the bridge. The FBI had bugged Blanton’s duplex in 1963 and tape recorded a conversation between him and his wife, Jean, where he talked about going to the river and planning to make a bomb at the Modern Sign Shop.
Fifty years later, the bombers are all behind bars or deceased. Cherry died in prison in 2004, and Blanton is serving a life sentence in St. Clair Correctional Facility. But the bridge and the roots of what transpired under it remain alive.
“This is an important story to remember and to not forget,” Thorne said. “The Klan is still with us and they are not dead, and we need to remember that and teach our children about it so they do not fall prey to the same sort of thing.”
Editor’s Note: Thanks to T.K. Thorne and her research in Last Chance for Justice for providing the basis for this article.
