UA Speaker To Discuss Birmingham Bombing Of House Belonging To King’s Brother, Atlanta Child Murders

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – A journalist who has written extensively about the post-Civil Rights movement in the South and who contends in a book he co-authored that the wrong man was convicted of killing two adults in the so-called “Atlanta Child Murders” will discuss those topics in a Tuesday, Jan. 16 talk at 4 p.m. on The University of Alabama campus.

Jeff Prugh, editorial page editor of the Marin (California) Independent Journal and former Atlanta news bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, will give the lecture as part of the UA history department’s Bankhead Lecture Series, in ten Hoor Hall, room 251.

Prugh’s presentation, “Justice Denied: Civil Rights Bombings in Birmingham and the Wayne Williams Case,” will focus on the bombing of the house of Martin Luther King Jr.’s brother in Birmingham in 1963 and the investigation into the deaths of 29 blacks, mostly children, whose killings between 1979 and 1981 rocked Atlanta and the nation.

Wayne Williams was convicted of killing two young adults and blamed for 22 other deaths. In the book, The List, Prugh and his co-author argue the case against Williams, who remains imprisoned pending appeal, is weak.

Prugh’s interest in the King bombing focuses on the prosecution of a man, Roosevelt Tatum, who told the FBI he saw two Birmingham police officers bomb King’s house. A federal grand jury later indicted Tatum for making a false statement to a federal officer, but Tatum contended he was tricked during the investigation and that the FBI rigged a polygraph test he failed.

The series of lectures is sponsored by UA’s history department and UA’s College of Arts and Sciences and is funded by a grant from the Bankhead Endowment. Prugh’s talk is free and open to the public.