While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age during the Civil Rights Movement

After several years in Atlanta, Sears planned to transfer Jerome again. McKinstry was fretting about this new move when she got a call from her father. He told her that the attorney general of Alabama had reopened the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church case and planned to try Robert Chambliss for the girls’ murders. McKinstry was thankful that she no longer lived in Birmingham; she knew the case would be all over the headlines there, and she was working hard to leave the tragedy behind her.

McKinstry’s father called regularly with updates on the trial. According to eyewitnesses, the bomb wasn’t intended to hurt anyone. The Klan members who set the bomb hoped to frighten Birmingham’s Black population out of integrating public schools, but something went wrong with the timer, and the bomb exploded while the church was full of people instead of the planned wee hours of the morning. McKinstry believes this story.

Rober Chambliss was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, but the two other bombers walked free. Chambliss maintained his innocence, even writing a letter to the pastor of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, swearing he wasn’t behind the bombing. He died in prison in 1985 after serving eight years.