Long Time Coming

In September 1963, a bomb placed at Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church killed four young black girls, and the bombing became a symbol of white Southern opposition to the civil rights movement. Efforts by both local police and the FBI failed to bring any convictions. But the author, then in her 20s, knew that her uncle Robert Chambliss and his fellow Ku Klux Klan members were involved in the act. This account reconstructs the case as well as the atmosphere of fear and tension among those whose relatives were virulent segregationists. In 1977, when the case was reopened by state authorities, Cobbs's testimony helped convict Chambliss, who died in prison in 1985. But the author, who went into hiding because of harassment after the trial, contends that many other facets of the case and Klan activities have never been probed. An epilogue reveals that her post-trial passage included a transsexual operation to become Petric J. Smith. Photos. (Nov.)