But for the bomb, the four would be in their 60s, probably grandmothers. Three were 14 and one was 11 in 1963 when the blast killed them in the 16th Street Baptist Church, which is four blocks from the law office of Doug Jones, who then was 9.
He was born in May 1954, 13 days before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision. He was 16 when he attended, at Birmingham’s Legion Field, the Alabama Crimson Tide vs. University of Southern California Trojans football game, in which USC’s Sam Cunningham, an African-American all-American, led a 42-21 thumping of the home team, thereby advancing the integration of the region through its cultural pulse, college football. Roll Tide.
As a second-year law student Jones cut classes to attend the 1977 trial of one of the church bombers, “Dynamite Bob” Chambliss. In 2001 and 2002, as U.S. attorney, Jones successfully prosecuted two other bombers. Was there resentment about this protracted pursuit of justice? No, he says as he nurses with tea a voice raspy from campaigning, because after 9/11 intervened, punishing domestic terrorism was not controversial.
Today, this son of a steelworker stands between Roy Moore — an Elmer Gantry mixing piety and cupidity: he and his family have done well financially running a foundation — and the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions.
