Exactly 40 years ago this week, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) dubbed Alabama’s then-attorney general an “honorary nigger” and basically threatened to kill him. 29-year-old AG Billy Baxley promptly issued his response on official State of Alabama letterhead: “kiss my ass.”
So what led to this exchange?
On Sunday, September 15, 1963, members of the KKK planted over a dozen sticks of dynamite below the steps of Birmingham, Alabama’s 16th Street Baptist Church. In what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called “one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity,” the dynamite exploded and killed four young black girls and injured 22 other churchgoers.
In 1965, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover identified five men as suspects in the bombing. However, the investigation was closed in 1968 without any charges being filed.
It later came to light that Hoover had blocked some of the evidence in the case from being made public and subsequently shut down the investigation.
Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley chose to reopen the case in 1971. In spite of the FBI’s lack of cooperation and limited evidence, Baxley successfully prosecuted Robert Edward Chambliss, one of the initial suspects named by the FBI. Chambliss was convicted and sentenced to multiple life terms in prison.
“I wanted to try to solve that case and do something about the people who killed the little girls,” Baxley later told PBS. “It took us a couple of years to really get on the trail of the right people… (Chambliss) was the ringleader. He was responsible for 30 or 40 bombings over a two or three-decade period in Birmingham. His nickname was dynamite Bob and he was very proud of it.”
The KKK was furious the Baxley chose to reopen the case. Infamous white supremacist leader Edward R. Fields, the Grand Dragon of the New Order Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, made their displeasure known in a scathing letter.
We would like to congratulate you, you are now and honorary nigger. We hope that you are proud of yourself now, you WHITE NIGGER. We hope you are soon blessed with the same condition that the nigger lover Kennedy contracted, which is dead……. a long time dead…
“I took it as a threat,” recalls Baxley. “He called me a traitor to my race and how dare I prosecute or investigate these white Christian patriots and blah, blah, blah, blah. And so they demanded a response. So I sat down and wrote them a response.
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
STATE OF ALABAMAFebruary 20, 1976
“Dr.” Edward R. Fields
National States Rights Party
P. O. Box 1211
Marietta, Georgia 30061Dear “Dr.” Fields:
My response to your letter of February 19, 1976, is – kiss my ass.
Sincerely,
BILL BAXLEY
Attorney General
“Well, that’s the way I felt — then and now,” says Baxley, now a private attorney. “I think the ironic thing about the letter, the way it got public was the Klan released it. I never would’ve released it. I would’ve been afraid that my mother would’ve thought it was terrible of me using bad language, so I didn’t tell anybody that I wrote it – just a couple of people in the office knew. But they went nuts when they got it. And they published it in their hate publication that came out every week or so.”
Four decades later, Baxley’s letter lives on as another fascinating moment in Alabama’s long and complex civil rights history.
