AIDING, ABETTING "BOMBINGHAM": The F.B.I
Copyright 2001 - Mumia Abu-Jamal

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s left several powerful images burned into the minds of millions of Americans. Those images are so deeply seared into national consciousness that place names work as a kind of mental snapshot, better than that of Polaroids(R).

For those of a certain age in America, the mere mention of the name, Birmingham, evokes a dark shadow from history. It evokes the Alabama of virulent hatred, of water hoses unleashed on children, hitting with the force of a sledgehammer, of snarling police dogs biting at youngsters, of burning crosses, and of firebombed churches.

The specter of Birmingham arose again recently when an elderly Ku Klux Klansman, Thomas Blanton, Jr., was convicted for his role in the infamous bombing of the 16th St. Baptist Church there in 1963, where four little black girls were killed, and others maimed and wounded.

While the media and government have praised the prosecution of Blanton, the real question is why did it take so long?
It took so long because of the F.B.I.
In American myth the FBI of Hoover’s day were projected as the best-of-the-best. They were squeaky clean grown-up versions of the boy scouts. The movie "Mississippi Burning" paints them as true blue heroes, knights of the realm, who work for freedom, justice, and vanilla ice-cream.
In truth, the FBI played a pivotal role in the Civil Rights Movement, but not the one reflected in the movies.

For the better part of 40 years, the FBI held secret tapes of Blanton (which were finally released for his recent trial) and other KKK members confessing to bombings and other acts of violence. The FBI also had a deep-cover informant in the KKK (named Gary Thomas Rowe) who participated in a number of bombings and other violent crimes for which he was never prosecuted.

The FBI was too busy, it seems, investigating, harassing, framing and "neutralizing" black leaders, like Martin Luther King (Jr. *and* Sr.!), Malcolm X, and groups like the NAACP, CORE, SNCC, The Black Muslims, SCLC, the MFDP (Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party), and a host of others.

If you still have any illusions about the role of the FBI during that historic period, consider the observations of former professor, Howard Zinn, who was teaching at the time at the historically Black Spelman College in Atlanta. Several of his students were active in the Movement, and Zinn went along to observe at demonstrations. When SNCC members Chico Neblett and Avery Williams went to the county courthouse to feed and assist those trying to register to vote, they were beaten, knocked to the ground, zapped with cattle prods, and jailed, by local police. Across from the courthouse, was the federal building, and as Zinn explains:

"That federal building also housed the local F.B.I. Two FBI agents were out on the street taking notes. Two representatives of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division were also there. We were all watching the arrest of two men for standing on federal property urging people to register to vote. I turned to one of the Justice Department lawyers.
‘Don’t you think federal law has just been violated?,’ I asked.
‘The Justice man said, ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Are you going to do something about that?’
‘Washington is not interested.’"
[fr. Zinn, H. *Declarations of Independence* (1990), 247]
Washington watched as four little girls, dressed in their Sunday best, were blown to bits, and chose to protect the racist terrorists and bombers, over that of black babies.
For to do otherwise would be to violate their true role, of race police, and political police. These were the real "X-files."

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