The guilty verdict in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing trial could send a false message to the nation that race relations in Alabama are better than they actually are, says UAB civil rights historian Jack Davis, Ph.D.
The outcome of the trial isn't indicative of justice in Alabama, he said.
"There's still a tremendous amount of discrimination that exists." Davis points to statistics from the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama that show nearly 65 percent of all murders in Alabama involve black victims, but 80 percent of the people currently on death row were convicted of crimes in which the victims were white.
And nearly 70 percent of those executed in Alabama in the past 20 years have been black.
Contact Gail Short, Media Relations, 205-934-8931 or [email protected].
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