Old memories of violent racism in bombing trial

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- One aging witness had to walk to the stand with a cane and an aide at his side. Another was so weakened by a stroke that his testimony had to be read aloud by a friend. A girlfriend jilted more than 37 years ago unearthed sometimes vague memories of the virulent and violent racism of her former lover.

From across the decades, witnesses in the trial of former Ku Klux Klansman Thomas Blanton Jr., who is accused of murdering four black girls in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, told a state court jury how he boasted of wanting blacks to die and terrorized them routinely.

Waylene Vaughn, then Blanton's girlfriend and a waitress at a bus station lunch counter, said he took her on joy rides in which he once attempted to run over a black man, who barely escaped by diving onto a curb. She said he twice poured acid on the car seats of unsuspecting black people as they shopped at a local grocery store.

"He explained it could burn skin, but not fabric," Vaughn said of the chemical, as Blanton, 62, listened without expression and family members of one bombing victim looked on grimly from the front row. "I smelled it and it was very strong. It was the type of smell you jerked your head away from it once you smelled it."

James Lay, a former civil defense worker who suffered a stroke early this year, was not able to testify. But his grand jury testimony, read aloud by a former colleague, revealed that he identified a photo of Blanton in November 1963 as "closely resembling" one of two men he saw two weeks before the bombing in the pre-dawn darkness, examining the precise spot where the bomb ultimately went off.

Lay said the men sped away after he shined his high beams on them. He said he called the police, who arrived minutes later and "told me I hadn't seen a damned thing."

Prosecutors said that additional testimony on Friday -- which will include a tape from a 1963 wiretap in Blanton's kitchen -- will show that Blanton boasted and laughed about planting the bomb at the church.

The jarring recollections on the third day of testimony revealed the strength and weaknesses of the government's case. Racism was so accepted -- and Klansmen felt so protected by the police department -- that a trail of Blanton's acquaintances is poised to testify that he terrorized blacks and boasted of having played a part in the bombing.

But the memories are very old, as are some of those relating them. Blanton's attorney, John Robbins, has centered his defense on challenging the fading memories of witnesses and pointing out that people who could corroborate them have died or disappeared beyond the reach of investigators.

In 1963, Blanton's memory of his whereabouts in the hours before the bombing was shaky as well. According to FBI reports of interviews with him at the time, which were read into the record Thursday by aging former FBI agents, Blanton said he dropped off a date at 1:45 the morning of the bombing and went home.

Later, he changed the time to 2 a.m. -- a crucial difference because a government witness who has since died claimed to have seen Blanton's car at the church at that time, right beside the spot where the bomb went off at 10:24 that morning.