1958 Bethel Baptist Church bombing
The 1958 Bethel Baptist Church bombing was a racially motivated terrorist attack against Civil Rights Movement leader Fred Shuttlesworth's Bethel Baptist Church in Collegeville on June 29, 1958. The bombing was the second in a string of three bomb attacks targeting the church.
The bomb used consisted of 16 sticks of dynamite placed into a white 5-gallon paint bucket and left beside the church. Restaurant worker Laverne McWilliams noticed the smoking article on her way home from work. Thinking it was a fire, she alerted the Civil Rights guards, led by Colonel Stone Johnson who were standing watch from the porch of the deacon's house across the street. Johnson and others located the bomb and carried it to the street before it exploded.
The shock wave from the explosion damaged windows and rattled cupboards for several blocks' radius. The church sustained minor damage as windows broke and light fixtures fell to the floor.
J. B. Stoner, a virulent white supremacist who would later organize the neo-Nazi National States Rights Party, boasted in the presence of undercover investigators that he had organized the bombing. He was indicted in 1977 by a Birmingham grand jury at the request of Attorney General of Alabama Bill Baxley on charges of endangering life by placing a bomb near an occupied dwelling. Stoner fought extradition and claimed that he and others had rejected offers of thousands of dollars to bomb the church by Tom Cook, whom he said was an FBI informant. Cook, a Birmingham Police Department detective, denied being an informant or offering any such bounties.
Stoner was extradited to Alabama for trial in 1980. The jury convicted him and gave him a minimum sentence of 10 years. After three years of appeals failed, Stoner went on the lam for 5 months. He eventually served 3½ years in prison before being paroled.
References
- "Stoner Denies Charge" (October 18, 1977) Waycross (Georgia) Journal-Herald
- Mitchell, Louis D. (November 1978) "Another Redemption: Baxley in Birmingham" The Crisis. Vol. 85, No. 9, pp. 311-17
- Temple, Chanda & Jeff Hansen (July 16, 2000) "Ministers' homes, churches among bomb targets." Birmingham News
- McWhorter, Diane (2001) Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0743226488
- Garrison, Greg (January 17, 2011) "Birmingham honors Colonel Stone Johnson's courage." Birmingham News