Southern Explosure.

The article provides information on the book "Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climatic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution," by Diane McWhorter. Thirty-eight years after the bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church, two of the four principals are dead, but the issues are still full of life. Thomas Blanton Jr. is one of two surviving Klan bombers, and after a jury convicted him in early May of murdering the four black girls that Sunday morning, former Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley accused the U.S. federal Bureau of Investigation of concealing evidence and aiding the Ku Klux Klan for decades after the event. The book includes the most detailed account ever of the Birmingham Movement's strategy and tactics, but what makes it unique is its account of the local opposition to civil rights, and particularly the links between the "Big Mules," who ran Birmingham's industrial economy, and the Klan bombers.