While the World Watched (19 page)

Chapter 22

The Calling

* * *

The Spirit of the Sovereign L
ORD
is on me, because the L
ORD
has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.

Isaiah 61:1

Christians should be ready for a change because Jesus was the greatest changer in history.

Ralph Abernathy

In the spring of 2002, I continued to think about our country’s race problem. My children were now grown, and Jerome and I were still in Birmingham. Some things had improved in our city since we’d moved back, and blacks now had access to more jobs and opportunities. But although schools were technically no longer segregated, in practice they were just as segregated as they’d been in 1963. Sadly, so were churches. And perhaps most troubling of all, some people’s hearts hadn’t changed either.

Before he died, Dr. King had told us we had moved from the Civil Rights era to the human rights era. He said the issue at hand was bigger than race—it was about the value of human beings as children of God. I incorporated this idea into many speeches I gave as I traveled around the country. I also started work as a consultant for a project that helped lift the socioeconomic status of Southern rural black women, especially the extremely impoverished in communities such as Alabama’s Black Belt, rural areas of Georgia, and the Mississippi Delta. We worked with poor people and particularly seniors, with everything from tax preparation to basic economics to HIV education.

During this time I studied all the social and economic justice information I could get my hands on. I began to understand the value of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948.
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I learned that the United States was the only member of the United Nations that had not thrown its full support behind the document. I longed for more involvement—for my country, for my city, and for myself. I prayed God would use me.

I didn’t get an immediate sense of a calling from God—it was something that evolved over time. But gradually, step by step, I felt the Spirit of the Lord upon me. I knew he had anointed me to preach the gospel, to bind up the brokenhearted, and to proclaim liberty to the captives. The women in the Delta knew I had risen above the tragedy of the church bombing, and they loved and admired me for that. But I knew they needed a message that would give them true hope beyond my story. They needed something bigger they could hold on to—God’s message. I wanted to make sure the message I was giving them was the right one, and that’s when I started feeling the pull to go to divinity school.

If, during this time, anyone had asked me if any issues from my past were still circling overhead, I would have said an emphatic no, for I had been born again and had moved on with my life. I was just trying to do God’s will.

I had no idea that my life was about to change and that my world would be turned upside down and inside out. I would once again be forced to relive the horrors of September 15, 1963.

* * *

I still worked at BellSouth, where I’d been for more than twenty years. But I had grown restless and bored with my work, and I sensed that God had a new direction in mind for me. I decided it was time to leave.

On the way home from work one day, I prayed, “Lord, I need a sign. Can you show me something?” I thought I was asking him to help me chart a course for retirement. I didn’t have any grand notions about a calling.

As I turned into my community, I noticed a large billboard I had not seen before. It read, “Faith always takes the first step.” Then, as though God were sitting in the car with me, I heard a voice say, “Carolyn, it is not a faith walk if I give you a calendar.”

I knew I had heard from God, and I understood what he was saying to me. The next morning I drove to work, typed my retirement letter, and presented it to my director. I never looked back.

Less than a month before my retirement went into effect, the unthinkable happened. On May 2, 2002, the Circuit Court of Jefferson County served me with a witness subpoena in the
State of Alabama v. Bobby Frank Cherry
case. It was as if a long-buried corpse had made its way out of the graveyard and was suddenly sitting in my living room.

You are hereby ordered to appear before this court as noted below and continue to appear from day-to-day hereafter until legally excused. This order is subject to all judicial enforcement and sanction.

The subpoena ordered me to appear in court at 9:00 a.m. on May 6, 2002—to testify on behalf of Bobby Frank Cherry! Initially, I misunderstood the subpoena.

The prosecuting attorney must have sent this,
I reasoned.
He wants me to talk about the church—share its history and tell my story about the bombing.

But when I spoke with Doug Jones, the attorney for the prosecution and a friend of mine, I discovered that Bobby Cherry’s attorney had subpoenaed me to testify as a witness for the
defens
e
!

“What?” I cried. “They want me to testify for Cherry—one of the men who killed my friends?”

I couldn’t understand why Cherry’s attorney would serve me with a subpoena.
Shouldn’t I be testifying for the prosecutor, Jeff Wallace?
Bobby Frank Cherry is responsible for planting the bomb that killed four of my friends—why would I speak out in his defense?

My stomach knotted.
Will this ever end? Do I have it in me to handle another assault?

For the next few days I suffered unrelenting nausea and diarrhea. I telephoned Doug Jones and asked him if I had to go to court and testify for Cherry.

“Yes, Carolyn,” he told me. “If you’ve been served with a legal subpoena and you don’t show up, the judge can have you arrested.”

Arrested?
Apparently I had no choice.

I tossed and turned all that night.
I can’t do it,
I cried.
I can’t bear to be in the same room with Cherry or look at his face.
Worse than that (and I would not have admitted this to anyone), I was afraid. Bobby Cherry might have been behind bars, but he represented a network of evil and hatred in Birmingham. I wasn’t naive enough to think Klan violence was merely a thing of the past. I was afraid for my own safety and for my family. Plus, there was the fear of the unknown—I still didn’t understand why Cherry’s attorney had contacted me. What would I do?

My stomach was constantly upset. I heard that another person scheduled to testify in the case had received death threats. All the old fears I had long ago put to rest, which I thought were well buried and forgotten, rose up again to haunt me.

Over the years I had developed a certain comfort level with the painful events in the past. I had found a way to make peace with them, to live with them. Now the old fears returned and threatened to strangle me, to sink me back in that horrible pit of depression I’d spent years struggling to climb out of. Almost four decades had passed, but in an instant, I was fifteen again.

Chapter 23

The Cherry Trial

* * *

[Bobby Frank Cherry was a] trucker with an eighth grade education, no upper front teeth, a “Bobby” tattoo on his arm, seven [sic] kids, and a wife he beat and cheated on.

Diane McWhorter
[79]

He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Leading up to the trial, I paced around the house for days. I developed panic attacks, and my heart raced for no explainable reason. I couldn’t concentrate. Nothing brought me comfort.

I had no idea what to expect when I appeared in court.

A few days before the trial, the telephone rang. I picked up the receiver and heard the voice of Rodger Dale Bass Jr., Bobby Cherry’s attorney. He was calling to make sure I would be present at the trial.

“Yes,” I said. “I told you I’d be there. . . . Yes, nine o’clock on the morning of May 6.”

I hung up the phone and threw up my hands in disbelief. Who would have thought that, almost forty years later, I’d still be dealing with the fallout from that September day?

Even now, I don’t understand why I was called to testify on Cherry’s behalf. The only thing I can think of is that this was one more way to add insult to injury.

* * *

On the morning of May 6, 2002, Jerome and I drove to the courthouse. I had been sick all night. I put my hand over my heart.

“I am not sure I can do this, Jerome!” I said. Within moments, I would be face-to-face with one of the men who had murdered my friends.

Be with me, Jesus,
I prayed.

You can do it, Carolyn. I’ll be with you,
Jesus assured me.

Jerome parked the car. When he opened my door, reporters and photographers descended on me like locusts. They stuck microphones in my face and shouted out questions. They surrounded Jerome and me, clicking their cameras, blocking our way. It felt like a nightmare.

In the chaos, Jerome quickly took off his suit jacket and covered my head with it. Then he put his arms around me and gently led me into the court building. My heart was beating so intensely that I expected it to pop out of my chest. I prayed I could answer the attorney’s questions without becoming angry and without crying. I had seen only one faded newspaper photo of Bobby Frank Cherry many years before. Even then, the sight of him had sent chills down my spine.

What will it be like to see Cherry now?
I wondered.
How can I sit in the same room with him?

I also wondered what questions I’d have to answer. What could I possibly have to say in this man’s defense?
No matter what they ask me,
I told myself,
I will say as little as possible.
Doug had promised he wouldn’t cross-examine me. “Carolyn, just answer the questions as simply and succinctly as you can,” he had instructed me.

When we stepped inside the building, guards directed me to a holding room. “Mrs. McKinstry, you can’t go into the courtroom until you are called to testify.”

“Can my husband come into the holding room with me?” I asked.

“No. But Mr. McKinstry can go into the courtroom.”

Jerome hugged me and reassured me and then walked into the courtroom. Guards escorted me to a small room filled with Bobby Cherry’s family members, neighbors, and friends.

Everyone looked at me—the only black person—when I entered the room. I wondered if they, too, hated black people. I wasn’t angry with Cherry or his family, but I resented the situation. Out of consideration for me and what I’d been through, I felt I should have been placed in a separate room.

“If you don’t know anything about Harley Davidsons,” one of the men said, “then you’re probably not going to fit in here very well.” He then introduced himself as Bobby Cherry’s pastor.

I glanced at the man out of the corner of my eye. He wore a worn leather jacket and black boots that came clear up to his knees. He had pulled his stringy, greasy hair into a long ponytail that hung down the nape of his neck.

“I am quite familiar with motorcycles. My son has a Honda 150,” I told him.

Then a young man no older than twenty, dressed in a military uniform, looked my way and said a soft hello. I returned his greeting. Later I found out the young man was Cherry’s grandson.

We all sat together in the small room, trying to avoid one another’s eyes. No one said another word. Every now and then the bailiff walked into the dead-quiet room and called a name. “It’s your turn to take the witness stand,” he would say.

I tried hard to remain composed as we sat in stony silence while I waited for the bailiff to call my name.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

“Mrs. Carolyn Maull McKinstry,” the bailiff finally called. “It’s your turn to take the witness stand.”

He makes me lie down in green pastures.

I followed the bailiff into the courtroom and took the oath.

He leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.

I swore to tell the truth, the whole truth.

He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

I sat down in the witness chair beside the judge.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .

Bobby Frank Cherry sat directly in front of me, only ten feet away.

I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

I felt like a knife had cut deep into the old painful wound, sliced open the healed scar, and caused it to bleed freely once again.

Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

I looked at Bobby Frank Cherry’s face.

Cherry fixed his steel-cold eyes on mine, and like a snake, his eyes never blinked, never moved. His expression—blank and hard—never changed as I answered the attorney’s questions.

“Mrs. McKinstry,” Mr. Bass asked. “Where were you on Sunday, September 15, 1963?”

I answered his questions as directly and honestly as I could. The questions were fairly straightforward: “What did you see that morning at church? Where were you standing when the explosion occurred?”

I looked away from Cherry’s emotionless face as much as I could. But every time I glanced back his way, Bobby Frank Cherry’s eyes were locked on mine. In those eyes, I sensed all the hate and bitterness directed toward me.

You’re trying to intimidate me, Mr. Cherry. And you’re succeeding.
I still couldn’t figure out why the defense had called me to testify. Was this some sort of cruel joke?

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

As I sat in that chair in front of the judge, the attorney, and the defendant and answered question after question, I saw in my mind’s eye the faces of my four dead friends. Then I focused my eyes on the face of their murderer. As Cherry stared point-blank at me, the events of Sunday, September 15, 1963, assaulted me all over again.

The thunderous boom.

The window glass shattering and falling to the floor.

The eerie silence shrouding the church.

The command to “hit the floor!”

The church members screaming, “My children! My children!”

My two brothers, nowhere to be found.

The police cars surrounding the church.

The evening news showing stretchers covered in white sheets, carrying the burned, mutilated bodies of my four friends to the morgue.

Like a flash flood, it came rushing back, threatening to overwhelm me. I again heard my mother’s words: “There were four little girls in the restroom who never made it out. They’re all dead.”

I yearned to leave the witness chair, to break away from Cherry’s fixed glare.

I spoke only the truth as I remembered it. Not a word I said helped Cherry. Before I stepped down and ended my testimony, a new fear took hold of my heart. I was older and more experienced than I’d been in 1963. I knew how violent Klan members could be. I knew what they were capable of doing to black people—even in the twenty-first century. What would happen to me?

Cherry’s eyes never stopped shouting out silent death threats. They held me in a hypnotic vise that felt as if it were about to crush me.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

“Thank you, Mrs. McKinstry,” the judge said. “You can step down now.”

Before I left, I looked again at Cherry’s face. I tried hard to find some type of goodness about him. I searched deep for some sign of sympathy or sadness or remorse for the lives he had cut short, for the pain he had caused so many people. But I found nothing in that face but evil.

Jerome later told me that during the trial Cherry’s ex-wife and granddaughter testified against him. They said he had boasted about the bombing.

“He said he lit the fuse,” Cherry’s ex-wife told the jury.

Prosecutors showed a videotape of a mob of white men beating Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. The
Washington Post
later described the scene in the courtroom: “Prosecutors froze the film as a slender white man with a bulbous nose, wavy hair and a cigarette dangling from his mouth—unmistakably a young Bobby Frank Cherry—was seen slamming his fist into the minister’s head after pulling what appeared to be a set of brass knuckles from his back pocket.”
[80]

A jury of nine whites and three blacks convicted Mr. Cherry of four counts of murder and sentenced him to life in prison. After the verdict, circuit judge James Garrett asked Cherry if he had anything to say.

“This whole bunch lied all the way through this thing,” Cherry said. “Now, I don’t know why I’m going to jail for nothing. I didn’t do anything.”
[81]

On November 18, 2004, Bobby Frank Cherry, seventy-four, died in prison from cancer.

* * *

A few days after Cherry’s trial ended, my friend Mrs. Alpha Robertson—Carole’s brokenhearted mother—quietly passed away. She finally found freedom after four decades of unbearable grief. I guess Mrs. Robertson just couldn’t leave this earth until she knew Carole’s killers had been caught and punished.

During Bobby Frank Cherry’s trial, I had to relive those past violent and tragic days in Birmingham’s history. Some might say I would have been completely justified to feel hatred, unforgiveness, and bitterness against the white people who had killed my friends and against all those who closed the doors of opportunity for generations of African-Americans.

But I discovered early in life—from my grandparents, my pastor, and others—that in God’s eyes, no life should be lived in hatred or unforgiveness. Bitterness hurts only the people whose hearts house it, not the offenders.

By God’s grace, I chose to forgive Bobby Frank Cherry, Robert Chambliss, Thomas Blanton, Herman Cash (a suspect who had died during the time the investigation was reopened), and all the others who lived lives of hate. It’s the difficult road, yet it’s also the road to ultimate freedom.

* * *

At the end of May 2002, my retirement from BellSouth became effective. I was ready—the joy of working there was now gone, and I sensed that God had something else in store for me. As I packed up my desk and said good-bye to friends, a chapter of my life closed that day. But almost immediately, a new one opened.

During the late 1970s and the 1980s, Birmingham’s black mayor, Richard Arrington, had conceived the idea of building a Civil Rights museum as a place to display and store historical documents, photographs, correspondence, reports, and other memorabilia that recounted the dark and difficult Civil Rights struggle in the South, particularly in Birmingham. He shared his dream with a group of black and white Birmingham citizens, who eagerly offered their support. Their desire was to take the lessons the city had learned during the violent struggle for Civil Rights and create a place that would “encourage communication and reconciliation of human rights issues worldwide, and . . . serve as a depository for Civil Rights archives and documents.” Led by Charles McCrary, the president and CEO of Alabama Power, Birmingham citizens raised $6.3 million. With support from the city, as well as Birmingham’s black and white businesses, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
[82]
opened its doors to the public in 1992.
[83]

I served on the board of directors of the Civil Rights Institute, and along with other volunteers, I frequently led tours through the Institute and the church and spoke to groups about the history of Birmingham and the struggle for Civil Rights. During that time God gave me a renewed vision for the church—both the physical building and his people. As a community, we have a charge to care for the building, because this is where we come to do the Lord’s work. We have inherited this structure and the history it contains, and we need to take care of it. But at the same time,
we
are the true church, not the building. God’s love resides inside
us
, so whenever we go out into the world, we take the church with us. God showed me that yes, I need to be part of the physical church, but I also need to take his love outside the church walls.

* * *

After the bomb exploded on September 15, 1963, shaking the church’s foundation and shattering its windows, people gave funds to repair Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. But many years had passed since then, and the church was once again in desperate need of repair. The old roof leaked. The wood had rotted around the windows, allowing rain to pour inside. The sanctuary carpets remained damp most of the time. The foundation had shifted, leaving deep crevices in the walls. In a word, the church was a mess.

One day, as I led a group of tourists through the church, I noticed a healthy crop of mushrooms growing out of the once-beautiful red carpet near the pulpit. That was the final straw—I knew something had to be done.

I also knew the problem wouldn’t be easily solved. Church membership had dropped drastically in recent years, and there was no money for repairs. While I pondered the problem and tried to figure out a solution, I came across a letter in the church’s archives. Written by Pastor C. L. Fisher to a new member, the letter was dated August 3, 1926.