Word: alabamas
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...Cherrys, it appears, pulled up dirt with their roots. Last week it was old mud when Bobby Frank Cherry, 69, and Thomas E. Blanton Jr., 61, both former Ku Klux Klansmen, were indicted by an Alabama grand jury on murder charges stemming from the 1963 bombing of a church in Birmingham that killed four black girls at Sunday school. Both men maintain their innocence. The attack was one of the most horrific crimes of the civil rights era, but only one suspect in the case, Robert E. Chambliss--who was convicted of murder in 1977 and died in jail...
...Cherry has testified to an Alabama grand jury about his father but, having been warned by prosecutors, is careful not to repeat his testimony. All he says is that on the night the dynamite was planted, he was with his father at a shop where Klansmen made rebel signs. "When you're called in on a subpoena and asked what you know...I can only tell them where he was at." He is anguished over his father, but he is also haunted by the bombing. "There never was a family get-together where someone wouldn't mention it," says...
...four men--Cherry, Blanton, Chambliss and Herman Frank Cash--were considered prime suspects. But according to some officials, witness statements were hard to come by. First there was the fear: If a person were to testify, would there be reprisals? Then there was hopelessness: Would a court in segregationist Alabama really do justice? And then there were the cops. During the '60s, the Klan had ears and eyes and tongues within the local police force. Nonetheless, after two years, FBI agents felt they had a strong case but said J. Edgar Hoover and his senior administrators blocked them from sharing...
...Back then, nobody would talk," says Rob Langford, a retired FBI supervisor. "You'd interview people, and they wouldn't want to testify. With the climate being different now, they are willing to cooperate." In the '70s, Alabama attorney general Bill Baxley successfully prosecuted "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss. But after Baxley left office, the case went mostly dormant and was not reopened until 1995. Langford, assigned to Alabama, met with local black leaders who were tired of delays. Says he: "What it took was a commitment to stick...
...cleaning their storm gutters. While most people would rush off to the doctor's office if they tore a ligament or had a cut that wouldn't heal, few seem to view their oral health with the same urgency, says Dr. Marjorie Jeffcoat, Rosen Professor at the University of Alabama School of Dentistry and a coauthor of the report. And while missing a few dentist appointments isn't likely to kill anyone, years of neglect could take their toll - in ways most people might not expect. "We are beginning to see information suggesting that chronic infection in your mouth...