Bending toward justice

The story of the decades-long fight to bring justice to the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing culminating in Sen. Doug Jones' prosecution of the last living bombers. On September 15 1963 the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama was bombed. The blast killed four young girls and injured twenty-two others. The FBI suspected four particularly radical Ku Klux Klan members. Yet due to reluctant witnesses a lack of physical evidence and pervasive racial prejudice the case was closed without any indictments. Years later Alabama Attorney General William Baxley reopened the case ultimately convicting one of the bombers in 1977. Another suspect passed away in 1994 and US Attorney Doug Jones tried and convicted the final two in 2001 and 2002 representing the correction of an outrageous miscarriage of justice nearly forty years in the making.