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Blacks die
on plane
shot by Russians
Pagel
Augusta jX'eius-SEUteuj
Volume 13, Number 22
PUSH ends Budweiser boycott,
$ multi-million agreement reached
Operation PUSH this week en
ded its year-old boycott against
Anheuser-Busch Companies,
brewers of Budweiser Beer, after
an agreement was reached wherein,
the brewery will spend millions of
dollars in the Black community.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson,
president of PUSH said, “We
welcome the program that August
Busch 111 has announced, and we
give our endorsement and support.
“The true value of such a program
to the Black community, if projec
ted over a five-year period, exceeds
$320 million.”
Busch said that his company has
a record “of which we are proud.
We are no,t perfect.” He said that
Birmingham bombing: Will anyone else be brought to trial?
Will anyone else be tried for
murder in the Sept. 15, 1963,
bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteen
th Street Baptist Church?
Twenty years after the bombing
took the lives of four Black girls
and six years after Robert Cham
bliss was convicted for the murder
of one of them, the most likely an
swer is “No.”
But, one investigator said,
“There are still some people
walking around that had
something to do with it.”
And a few of Chambliss’
prosecutors say the case could be
renewed.
Although they’ve all gone to
other jobs, men who worked
with then-state Attorney General
Bill Baxley to convict Chambliss
say they would help someone else
go after other suspects.
They say it will take someone as
an attorney general or a governor
willing to push the case to get it
going again.
Others from Baxley’s bombing
investigation team are less op
timistic about that possibility. But
Girl's father doesn't want
city to wash hands of bombing
Chris McNair never had to ex
plain to his teenage daughters Lisa
and Kimberly that he couldn’t buy
them a hamburger at Kress’
because they were Black.
By the time the girls were old'
enough to ask for such a treat,
downtown Birmingham store lun
ch counters were open to Blacks.
The “white only” signs over public
rest rooms and water fountains
had disappeared.
But there was a time more than
20 years ago when McNair had to
tell another little girl she couldn’t
eat at Kress’ lunch counter.
Her name was Carol Denise, the
eldest daughter of Maxine and
Chris McNair, the sister that Lisa
and Kimberly never knew.
On Sept. 15, 1963, at age 11,
Denise McNair died with three
other Sunday school girls in a
racially motivated bomb blast at
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.
The explosion shocked the
nation and turned Birmingham in
side out. That singular event, 20
years ago this month, spurred the
passage of national civil rights laws
and became Birmingham’s
stigmata. The city has never been
able to completely wash away the
deep stain left from those four
deaths.
As a father and as a Black, Chris
McNair, 57, does not want Bir-
WliSi
I
Jesse Jackson
they are still troubled about who
committed the 20-year-old crime
and haunted by the unanswered
questions.
Baxley, now lieutenant governor,
is tight-lipped about it. “I just
don’t comment on that thing
because anything I say could mess
up something in the future for it,”
he said.
However, he says that there is no
statute of limitations that would
prevent someone from being tried
for the bombing, even more than
20 years later.
“There’s still the possibility that
someone will come along with the
resources and authority and give it
the same commitment that Baxley
did,” said John Yung, who
worked on the case as an assistant
attorney general.
“That won’t happen with the
present attorney general,” said
Yung, who now works for the
Alabama State Bar Association.
A spokesperson for Attorney
General Charles Graddick said the
Baxley-era prosecutors left the at
torney general’s office with
mingham to wash its hands of that
day.
Bitterness still rises in his throat
when he says that Birmingham
“hasn’t done anything” to make a
lasting memorial to the four girls.
“I’m not interested in a plaque
or a statue. I’m talking about
something that would mean
something to the total community,
something positive like an en
dowed chair at the University of
Alabama,” said McNair.
But Birmingham now has the at
titude of “let’s forget it. It hap
pened. We can’t help it. Why bring
it up?” said McNair. “But people
are walking around free, who were
not indicted (for the bombing) and
probably never will be.”
The only conviction in the
crime—of Robert Chambliss in
1977 for the murder of
Denise —“wouldn’t have hap
pened except for the diligence of
Bill Baxley (then state attorney
general, now lieutenant gover
nor),” said McNair.
“The Jews are still trying to
track down those responsible for
the Holocaust. The Jews won’t let
them forget. This is the same
thing. I don’t want them to
forget,” said McNair.
“It could happen again,
anywhere in the nation. ”
In the years that followed the
S4OO in cash
taken from
city stockade
Page 3
Anheuser-Busch is committed to a
course of fairness and is deter
mined to continue to build upon an
already strong record.
Specifically Ansheuser-Busch
agreed to the following:
A hiring goal of reaching or
maintaining a number of Blacks
and Hispanics in direct proportion
to their representation in the
population in the regions where
Anheuser-Busch operates
facilities.
Currently 18 percent of the
company’s work force is minority.
The company said it is commit
ted to increasing the number of
minorities appointed to middle and
upper management levels.
nothing new to go on. “The status
of the case is inactive at this time.
There is no evidence that makes it
an active case. It’s a 20-year-old
case and there’s not an in
vestigation on it,” said Janie
Nobles, speaking for Graddick.
She said Graddick’s office is busy *
on other cases.
“If evidence is found, the case
would be pursued by the attorney
general’s office,” she said.
Graddick became attorney
general in 1978 when Baxley fan
for governor and lost. In 1980,
Graddick said his office had never
looked into the church bombing.
He said that when he took office,
Baxley indicated he thought he had
done all that could be done with
the case.
“I don’t think any work is being
done on it right now, and I’m not
optimistic about it being brought
to trial,” George Beck said recen
tly. Beck, a former Baxley
assistant attorney general, now is
in private practice in Montgomery.
“I’d be happy to help and share
my files if there was some way
bombing, McNair was sometimes
reluctant to talk about the tragedy,
particularly when he was running
for office. In 1972, in a special
countywide election, he became
the first Black from Jefferson
County to win a seat in the
Legislature since Reconstruction.
He was re-elected in 1974, but was
defeated in 1978 when he ran for
Congress.
But as he became more visible
than parents of the other bombing
victims, McNair increasingly
became a national spokesman on
the tragedy. It’s a role he doesn’t
shun but doesn’t especially
cherish. “It’js a bonanza to inter
view me,” he says with a hint of
sarcasm.
“I’m kind of unique. My child
was in the bombing. My daughter
is at the University of Alabama. I
was a politician, and I’m capable
of speaking and communicating.”
As the 20th anniversary of the
church bombing has neared,
McNair has been interviewed by
The New York Times, People,
U.S. News and World Report and
Newsweek.
He is asked about how Blacks
and whites get along in Bir
mingham now. And have things
changed?
Birmingham, he tells them, is
not worse or better than anywhere
Black women
in business
to hold v > '
Pai
September 17,1983
For the coming year, the com
pany has targeted $23 million in
purchases from minority suppliers
and $lO million in construction
contracts with minority com
panies.
It will place $2 million in cer
tificates of deposit at 44 minoritv
owned banks in 1984, $6 million in
lines of credit with 25 minority
owned banks, and $6 million in
payroll deposits.
During 1984, it will spend $8
million with minority-owned
newspapers, magazines, radio and
television.
It established a $5 million
see Boycott, page 6
some public official could continue
with it,’’said Beck.
Bob Eddy, Baxley’s investigator
who found the state’s key witness
against Chambliss, says he’s been
cautioned by the attorneys not to
discuss the case because it could be
renewed. Eddy now works for the
Mobile County district attorney.
But others like retired Bir
mingham Police Sgt. E.H. Can
trell, who now lives on a small
farm near Guin, have little hope
for the case being reopened.
“There’s nothing to bring it
back on. We left nothing untur
ned,” said Cantrell, who was
assigned to the investigation with
Capt. Jack LeGrand, now
deceased.
Yet, Cantrell is still bothered
that the bombing story hangs out
there without an ending. “The
whole thing from 20 years ago on
through is distorted. There are so
many scenarios. All I really wanted
was the truth,” says Cantrell,
ruefully.
He still wants to know the step
by-step details about the person or
else in the nation. “That’s why I
didn’t leave years ago,” says
McNair. “There is a better
awareness on the part of people in
the community. Law enforcement
and the judical system have
changed and are better compared
to 20 years ago. But it hasn’t im
proved enough.”
He is openly bothered that
Blacks helped elect George
Wallace to a fourth term as gover
nor. Wallace helped set the stage
for the church bombing with his
stand in the church bombing with
his stand in the schoolhouse door,
says McNair. “The venom Wallace
was espousing to weak minds
meant that we have the license to
do this,” he says.
Strangely, said McNair, few in
terviewers ask him about
economics.
“Most seem to think you should
be satisfied you can buy a ham
burger anywhere,” said McNair.
That’s why he’s interested in
seeing an endowed chair made a
memorial—to help Blacks in the
economic struggle.
“For things to change, you have
to keep working at it,” said
McNair. “The struggle is never
over. That doesn’t necessarily
mean the Black struggle. The only
see Father, page 6
Less than 75 percent Advertising
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Bill Cosby
persons who planted the bomb that
killed Denise McNair, 11, Cynthia
Wesley, Carole Robertson and
Addie Mae Collins, all 14.
“I used everything I knew to get
the truth. Certain People agreed to
let me talk to Chambliss. I
promised him that I would camp
on the governor’s doorstep of he
would come through with the
whole story,” said Cantrell.
He made several trips to Kilby
Prison to see Chambliss, who wa.*
in ill health and anxious to get oui
of prison where he is serving a life
sentence for the murder of Denise
McNair. But the promise did little
good.
“Chambliss still wouldn’t do it.
He said he told the truth,” said
Cantrell. Chambliss, now 79,
always has said he had no part in
the bombing. He has declined to be
interviewed by The News.
“Now, I think he’s possibly past
telling the truth,” said Cantrell,
who added that someone else will
have to come forward and tell it
all. Chances of that, he thinks, are
slim. “It would be a waste of time
Blacks die on plane
shot by Russians
DETROIT Six Detroit Blacks
were aboard the Korean Air Line
747 shot down Sept. 8.
Among tne dead are Jessie rnarr
Slaton, 75, a former Common
Pleas judge and head of
Michigan’s Crime Victims Com
pensation Board, and Margaret
Zarif, a director of the Afro-
American Museum here.
The two friends were among the
269 passengers, 61 of them
American, who perished when a
missile fired by a Soviet pilot
destroyed a Korean Air Lines
Boeing 747 that had strayed over
Kremlin defense outposts on islan
ds near Japan.
Two of 12 people from
Michigan aboard the ill-fated
plane, Mrs. Slaton and Mrs. Zarif
and four other friends from the
Detroit area were headed for a
two-week tour of Japan, Taiwan
and Hong Kong.
The six women left Detroit at
3:30 p.m. Tuesday on a Northwest
Orient Airlines flight to Kennedy
International Airport in New
York. They left Kennedy at 11:50
that night aboard the Korean Air
Lines flight and were scheduled to
switch planes in Seoul, Korea’s
capital, then fly to their final
destination before returning home
Sept. 14.
Ironically, Mrs. Slaton was
Church bombing
unsolved
< rAars later
’4 RY ■ .W
Bill Cosby
buys portion
of Coca-Cola
ATLANTA The Coca-Cola
Company has sold a portion of its
stock in The Coca-Cola Bottling
Company of New York, Inc. to
Bill Cosby. Terms of the transac
tion were not disclosed.
“It is only right I become a
business partner with Coca-Cola
USA,” said Cosby, “since I have
been a salesman for the company
for many years.”
Cosby is the second person in
recent weeks to acquire stock in
The Coca-Cola Bottling Company
of New York, Inc. from The Coca-
Cola Company.
In July the Company announced
a portion of New York Coke stock
see Coca-Cola, page 3
to open the case without new
evidence,” he said.
Since the Chambliss conviction,
there has been sporadic interest in
the case.
In February 1890, Jefferson
County District Attorney Earl
Morgan and Birmingham police
officials reopened the bombing in
vestigation.
Their interest was sparked after
The New York Times reported that
a Justice Department study on FBI
informant Gary Thomas Rowe
Jr.'s activities had linked five for
mer Klansmen, including Cham
bliss, to the church bombing. One
of the suspects was deceased.
Baxley, who was out of office,
said he had planned to ultimately
bring charges against the other
three men named in the Justice
Department report. But he said his
plans were pushed back due to pro
blems in trying to extradite white
supremacist J.B. Stoner from
Georgia in another bombing case.
“I hope the attorney general’s
see Bombing, page 6
presented with a plaque on*
Tuesday morning, in the City-
County Bldg., for “outstanding
service to the legal system,” by
Sylvia James, president of the
Wolverine Bar Assn.
The date of the
from the Detroit-Wayne County'
Criminal Advocacy Program, was
moved up so Mrs. Slaton could
make the trip, two years in* the
planning.
Mrs. Zarif, 59, a travel agent
and retired Detroit school teacher,
was a member of the Detroit Fire
Commission as well as a founder
of the Afro American Museum. It
was Mrs. Zarif, who changed her
first name to Min’imah after join
ing the Muslim faith, who brought
the Detroit group together. She
had studied had operated the
Salaam Travel Agency in recent
years.
The Rev. James Wadsworth,
who had known her for years,
praised her dedication to the Afro-
American Museum. “It was she
who caused me to become concer
ned about pledging to the mu
seum,” he said.
Others who will be mourned at
the Friday service: Joyce, Cham
bers, 34, a General Motors Corp,
employee who lived in Detroit. An
avid traveler, Miss Chambers was
see Plane, page 6
30c