In 1976, the Attorney General of Alabama, Bill Baxley, replied to an angry white supremacist with the succinct letter seen here. "Dr." Fields was angry because Baxley had reopened an unsolved case from 1963: 4 members of the KKK had bombed a church & killed 4 black girls...

As you can see by his reply, Baxley wasn't deterred, and the next year one of the Klansmen, ringleader Robert Chambliss, was found guilty and sent to jail, where he remained until his death in 1985. His accomplices, however, evaded prosecution. But not forever...

Had you been in the courtroom during that Baxley-led trial in the 70s, you may have seen a young law student watching from the gallery, transfixed, every day, having skipped classes. That enthralled student was @GDouglasJones...

Incredibly, two decades later, having worked his way up to become a US attorney, that same @GDouglasJones found himself succesfully prosecuting the two remaining culprits in the case (one of the Klansmen had since died)...

Jones later said, "I never in my wildest imagination dreamed that one day this case & my legal career would come full circle, giving me the opportunity, some 24 years later to prosecute the 2 remaining suspects for a crime that many say changed the course of history"...

I got in touch with Bill Baxley a few years back and asked if I could put his letter in the Letters of Note book. He was lovely, said yes, gave me a copy. He then agreed to chat with NPR about it. You can hear the conversation here: https://www.npr.org/2014/10/16/356728052/alabama-attorney-generals-1976-letter-told-kkk-off-in-3-short-words

Finally, the 4 victims, killed by the KKK in 1963, were Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Carol Denise McNair. Here's McNair's sister yesterday, when @GDouglasJones defeated Roy Moore... https://twitter.com/mickeywelsh/status/940798985886945280