![]() ![]() NAACP chapters statewide are sending letters in opposition to Blanton's release, and the Birmingham chapter is sending a busload of people to oppose parole, he said. The board rejected parole for Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., 78, who has served 15 years of a life term for being part of a group of Klansmen who planted a bomb outside Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist. (AP) Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. The president of the Alabama NAACP, Bernard Simelton, said releasing Blanton at a time when protests are occurring nationwide over police killings of black people would send a horrible message. ![]() Inmates are not allowed to attend parole hearings in Alabama, but opponents of Blanton's release are expected to address the three-person board when it meets in Montgomery. Relatives of three of the slain girls spoke against Blantons release during the hearing. The board has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday to consider parole for the 78-year-old Blanton. The decision to keep Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., 78, imprisoned was met with applause. Former Ku Klux Klan member Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., convicted in 2001 of the 1963 bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed 4 girls, died on Friday. Soon, Alabama's parole board will decide whether Blanton deserves to be free after serving 15 years of a life term for murder. The last living convicted bomber in one of the most notorious terrorist attacks in American history has been denied parole. Today, Blanton is old and imprisoned, the last survivor among three one-time KKK members convicted of murder in the bombing. Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., the last of three one-time Ku Klux Klansmen convicted in a 1963 Alabama church bombing that killed four Black girls and was the deadliest single. was a young Ku Klux Klansman with a reputation for hating blacks in 1963, when a bomb ripped a hole in the side of 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four black girls during the civil rights movement.
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