by TChris

Bobby Frank Cherry recently died of cancer, ending a life sentence that was imposed two-and-a-half years ago, after he was convicted of participating in the 1963 bombing of Montgomery's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

The violence of that explosion injured 20 people and ended the lives of four black children -- 14-year-olds Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins and 11-year-old Denise McNair. ... Though we did not call it so at the time, the act that killed them was an act of terrorism as brutal in its callousness as the Mideast terrorism we now condemn.

Nancy Grape finds in Cherry's death "a timely chance this Thanksgiving weekend to remember that long before this country was set off in blocs of red and blue states, it had been shriven by a far deeper conflict, this one in colors of black and white." She asks a timely question: is the Bush administration's Justice Department committed to the struggle for civil rights? (TalkLeft's background coverage of the Department's lessened attention to the enforcement of civil rights laws is here.)