Ku Klux Klansman

A former Ku Klux Klansman imprisoned for the 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls has been moved to a hospital and is critically ill, prison officials and relatives said. Bobby Frank Cherry, 74, has had heart problems and diabetes, and relatives said his health had worsened in recent months. He was moved from Holman Prison to Atmore Community Hospital in Birmingham.

Former Ku Klux Klansman David Duke won't get on the ballot for the Massachusetts Republican presidential primary because his campaign failed to gather enough signatures, Duke supporters said. "It's obvious we're not going to have enough to get on the ballot," said Alan Balboni, state coordinator of the Duke drive.

City officials changed their minds Saturday and decided against naming a park after a Ku Klux Klansman. The decision came in the wake of protests against Wednesday's decision to name the park after James R. Venable, 83, a former mayor and former imperial wizard of the klan. Mayor Jane Rhodes said she received a letter Friday from Venable requesting that the baseball park not be named for him because of the controversy.

Three former Ku Klux Klansman linked to a violent clash with black marchers 11 years ago held hands and prayed with several of the march leaders Saturday in a session designed to promote brotherly love. Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and four other black leaders met with the former klansmen as part of a settlement of a lawsuit stemming from a bloody confrontation between the KKK and black marchers in Decatur, Ala., in 1979.

A Ku Klux Klansman was sentenced today to life in prison for violating the civil rights of a black youth whose body was hanged in a tree. James (Tiger) Knowles had entered a guilty plea two years ago in a plea bargain that led to his testimony against Henry Francis Hays, another Klansman. Hays received the death sentence in January, 1984, for the murder of the youth, 19-year-old Michael Donald.

Federal grand jurors in Birmingham, Ala., are hearing testimony in the reopened case of a 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls. The Rev. John Cross, who was pastor of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church at the time of the explosion, said after his testimony that he had no trouble recalling the dynamite blast. In 1977, Ku Klux Klansman Robert Chambliss was convicted of murder in the explosion.

There won't be a trial for the last remaining ex-Ku Klux Klansman suspected of bombing the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963, a Birmingham judge ruled. Bobby Frank Cherry is mentally incompetent to stand trial on murder charges because of memory loss from dementia, ruled Jefferson County Circuit Judge James Garrett. Prosecutors had argued he was faking.

A judge in Birmingham refused to set aside a former Ku Klux Klansman's murder conviction in the 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls. Circuit Judge James Garrett's one-sentence ruling said he had reviewed all filings and that "the motion for a new trial is overruled." Bobby Frank Cherry, 71, was found guilty in May of the Sept. 15, 1963, bombing at Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a gathering place for civil rights demonstrators. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Attorneys for a former Ku Klux Klansman accused of murder in a 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls say they will begin their defense in Birmingham today by arguing that prosecutors have not proven their case. "Is that all they've got?" defense attorney John Robbins asked. Robbins said that before he calls his first witness, he will ask Circuit Judge James Garrett to dismiss the case on the grounds that the prosecution did not offer enough evidence to convict Thomas Blanton Jr.

A former Ku Klux Klansman who claims to suffer from dementia is mentally competent to stand trial in one of the worst attacks of the U.S. civil rights era: the murders of four young black girls in the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church, a psychologist testified. "It was my final opinion that any dementia he may suffer, which would be mild, would not impede his ability to help in his defense," psychologist Kathleen Ronan said during a competency hearing for Bobby Frank Cherry.