In April and May of 1963, Birmingham, Alabama was a focal point for the civil rights movement. Birmingham was home to one of the most violent cells of the KKK and violence against black people was so commonplace (especially in the form of explosives) that it was referred to as “Bombingham.” It was these conditions that lead Martin Luther King to arrive and organize a series of non-violent protests in the city. These protests were relatively low key and weren’t very well attended. This was due to the fact that political rivalries between King’s organization, the SCLC, and other civil right’s organizations like CORE and the NAACP. However, the Birmingham protests soon became headlines due to the response of the city’s police commissioner, Eugene “Bull” Conner, to the protests. Seeing any kind of black protest as a threat to his rule, Conner sent out police and firemen to subdue the non-violent protests. Soon enough scenes such as German Shepherds attacking black men and firemen hosing down protesters with high-pressure hoses became emblazoned across the country’s newspapers. Martin Luther King had also been arrested for his role in the protests (his 13th time) and while in jail, wrote his well know “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in response to another letter published by eight white Alabama clergymen (An Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense). This letter written by King went on to be published in national newspapers and circulated through various churches in pamphlet form.
Another important event that happened in September of 1963 was the bombing of the 16th street Baptist Church. In the explosion, four little girls were killed. (Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Rosamond Robertson and Addie Mae Collins) Four men had committed the bombing in an attempt to slow down the civil rights movement in Birmingham. These four men were Robert Chamblis, Thomas Blanton Jr., Bobby Frank Cherry, and Herman Frank Cash. However, even though there was evidence pointing to these four men as the perpetrator, the FBI, led by J. Edgar Hoover at the time, dragged its feet in the investigation and held evidence back. This was due to the fact that Hoover wasn’t fond of Martin Luther King and some circles say that he personally believed the bombing to have been committed by people interested in gaining sympathy for the civil rights cause. Whatever the case may be, it wasn’t until 1977 that a conviction could be obtained for just one of the men accused of the bombing. The bombing itself had the effect of uniting all of the civil rights organizations in the South and also giving a face, four faces to be precise, to the rest of the nation as a kind of message about the evils of racism.
The two articles to be analyzed for discrepancies is an article from the United Press and Birmingham World. Both cover the Church Bombing on September 15, 1963 and the events immediately after. The first major difference in the two articles is that the United...
