J.B. Stoner, white supremacist to the end, dies at 81

Associated Press/April 27, 2005

Lafayette, Georgia -- A white supremacist convicted in the civil rights-era bombing of a black church has died at a Georgia nursing home. J-B Stoner was 81. He died Saturday.

Stoner never changed his anti-integration views. Asked about them in an interview last year, he said, "A person isn't supposed to apologize for being right."

Stoner was a suspect in the 1958 bombing of the Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, but wasn't indicted until 1977. He eventually served three and a-half years in prison. The church was empty at the time of the bombing.

During his years of activism, Stoner revived a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, organized a political party -- the Stoner Anti-Jewish Party -- ran for governor of Georgia and represented Martin Luther King's assassin, James Earl Ray in court.