Historian Looks at Racial Killings, Race Relations in Birmingham

As the trial of Bobby Frank Cherry, the last suspect charged in the 1963 church bombing, begins this week, civil rights historian Jack E. Davis, Ph.D., at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), will be available to discuss topics related to the history of racial killings and race relations in Birmingham.

Posted on May 7, 2002 at 2:00 p.m.

WHAT:

  

As the trial of Bobby Frank Cherry, the last suspect charged in the 1963 church bombing, begins this week, civil rights historian Jack E. Davis, Ph.D., at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), will be available to discuss topics related to the history of racial killings and race relations in Birmingham.

WHO:

  

Jack E. Davis, Ph.D., specializes in the civil rights movement. He is editor of The Civil Rights Movement (2000, Blackwell Publishers). In 2001, Davis published Race Against Time: Culture and Separation in Natchez Since 1930 (LSU Press). One chapter of Davis’ book, Civil Rights and Uncivil Responses, recounts several brutal racial killings in and around Natchez, Mississippi, during the 1960s.

“Black and white citizens of Birmingham and Alabama are of a mixed mind over the trial of Bobby Frank Cherry,” says Davis, “but the prevailing sentiment seems to indicate support for the search for justice in the tragic killing of the four girls of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Yet, the trial is not likely to indicate significant change in Alabama race relations. Daily interactions between Alabama blacks and whites are as good, if not better, than most places in the country. But institutional racism, particularly in the criminal justice system and in public education, remains deeply entrenched in the state.”

Davis has been an expert source for stories related to the Sixteenth Street Church bombing case for media outlets, including The Christian Science Monitor, Voice of America, The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Birmingham Post-Herald. He was quoted in the December 13, 1998 Newsday article that looked at new efforts in the South to review and reopen forgotten civil rights era murder cases. Davis is an associate professor of history at UAB. Davis is prepared to discuss:

 

  • The history of racial killings in Birmingham and Mississippi and the recent efforts to reopen the cases

  • The status of race relations in Birmingham

  • What completion of the Sixteenth Street Church trial could mean for Birmingham

FYI:

  

Davis will not be available for interviews May 23-27, 2002.