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16th Street Church Bombing — Part 22
Page 46
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AP PHOTO
Rose adorns Civil Rights Memorial space dedicated to Willie Edwards.
said her husband confessed to leading six other
men ind rider murder.
Henry # der, 61, died in December 1992,
several after allegedly making the
weeks
statement to his wife, Diane Alexander.
She also said her husband was an FBI infor-
mant
layer said it is not clear whether Alexander
{other people in the abduction.
© woul Sas to the admis-
be es)
y in court,” he said, “and we would likely
have to have a judicial inquiry on the issue. This is
{ifferent from a person telling police some-
thing from the deathbed.”
Morris Dees, director of the Southern Poverty
Law Center and representing Edwards’ survivo
has ¢ the FBI to furnish all documents pet
to Alexander's role in the civil rights moy-
that began in Montgomery when blacks boy-
cotted segregated buses in late 1955
The Supreme Court in December 1956 upheld a
lower court ruling handed down by federal judges
Frank M. Johnson Jr. and Richard Rives, declar-
ing segregation unconstitutional.
Removing racial barriers on the buses set off a
wave of bombings and sniping incidents, including
the bombing of the home of boycott leader the
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Dees said he has been told Alexander may have
been involved in bombing King's home.
ed
Edwards, who took no part in the protest, appar-
ently was picked at random by Klai Us
gry about the desegregation orders.
In 1976, a man named Raymond Britt told inves-
tigators that he and several other men took part in
the incident, and Attorney General Bill Baxley ob-
tained indictments against them
Alexander was one of four men indicted on a
murder charge
But Montgomery Circuit Judge Frank Embry
dismissed the indictments because they did not
specify a cause of death. Baxley did not seek new
indictments,
He later said the FBI told him Alexander had
been an informant in the 1950s, and asked that he
be given “consideration.”
Another man who had been indicted in 1976,
William Kyle "Sonny" Livingston, a Montgomery
bail bondsman now age 55, said Wednesday he was
told in 1969 that Alexander was an FBI informant.
“It didn't mean anything to me,” he said. “I was
never in the Klan. But I’ve been persecuted over
this (Edwards) case for years, I was only 18 when
that happened, and I wasn't there. I hung around
with some people who were in the Klan, but I
wasn’t a member.”
Britt later recanted and said Livingston was not
present when Edwards was forced to jump from
the bridge.
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