Word: bibb
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...voice early on; she was schooled in opera from the age of 13. Appearing in a tour of the musical Finian's Rainbow in her late teens, she started to lend her classical and musical-stage training to the folk repertoire around 1950. Like Harry Belafonte, Leon Bibb and Makeba, Odetta played the swanker nightclubs before the big (mostly white) folk-music surge kicked in later in the decade. Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues, the 1956 Tradition LP with definitively scalding interpretations of "Muleskinner, Easy Rider" and "God's Gonna Cut You Down," announced the arrival of a voice whose...
...enforcement demanding justice and clergymen from the victimized churches pleading for mercy and forgiveness. One preacher, the Rev. Walter Hawkins, spoke in court with, he said, a "spirit of forgiveness. We love them and want them to come and visit us as soon as they finish their sentences." But Bibb County District Attorney Michael Jackson believed that full weight of justice still has to be imposed. The federal government may have exacted its due but Alabama had to get its hands on the trio to serve time under state law. That could mean an additional 15 years each...
...typically agree to a federal sentence in federal prison, if only to save the locals money. But in this racially charged case (five of the churches burned were predominantly black), bringing justice home is an issue. "They will do time in Alabama. I am not bending on that," says Bibb County DA Michael Jackson. Meanwhile, Alabama Attorney General Troy King, who is up for re-election this year, says he will not agree to a sentence and jail time that's federal only. "These were Alabama churches, Alabama congregations and there will be Alabama consequences...
...Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, says the crime bears the marks of "thrill and excitement" arson rather than a prank. The fires, for example, were carefully set from inside the churches, not outside, as in an impulsive act of vandalism. At Old Union Baptist Church in Bibb County, a large artificial-flower arrangement had been moved to the piano top, under an American flag, presumably to serve as tinder...
...absence of any apparent racial motive for the crimes is a small comfort in Birmingham. But the demise of the churches, some more than 100 years old, is still painful. "I began to sense loss for our older people," says Jim Parker, pastor at Ashby Baptist in Bibb County. "They were baptized and married here, and their people are buried here," he says. "But when the children started really crying, I realized it was all they had ever known too." Some things have changed in Alabama, but grief remains the same...