I grew up in Birmingham, attending the same schools and living in the same neighborhood as Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, the four little girls killed on September 15, 1963. Their murders broke something inside me. I vowed that if I ever met the man who bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church, I would kill him myself.
I later left Alabama after a terrifying encounter with a white police officer who threatened my life without cause.
God had other plans for me. In 1978, Alabama Gov. George Wallace appointed me as the first Black chaplain in the Alabama Department of Corrections. In 1985, I came face-to-face with the man I once vowed to kill: Robert Edward Chambliss. However, I wasn’t there for vengeance; I was there to pray with him. The Holy Spirit called me to put down the weapons I had carried in my soul.
When I walked in, Chambliss said, “I didn’t kill those girls.” I told him maybe a falling beam killed them when the bomb exploded, but he set the bomb. I told him he needed to repent. I spoke the words of the Sinner’s Prayer, and he repeated them, speaking his penitence out loud. I received that confession as a servant of the Lord and never saw him again.
That moment taught me about justice, truth, and redemption. God allowed me to release decades of rage. It is that lesson that leads me to write these words today.
For more than 50 years, I have brought faith to men behind Alabama’s prison walls. Over those years, I came to know Robin “Rocky” Myers. During his 31 years on death row, we prayed together and shared many meals.
In December 1991, Ludie Mae Tucker was stabbed to death in her Decatur, Alabama, home. Three years later, a nearly all-white jury found Myers guilty. The evidence was flimsy: Witness accounts conflicted, and no murder weapon or DNA connected him to the crime. One witness has since recanted under oath; evidence shows another was offered a deal for testimony. Recognizing these deep questions, Governor Kay Ivey commuted Myers’s sentence to life in prison in February 2025. A petition pending in Morgan County now asks a judge to vacate his sentence entirely.
It looks to me that Myers is not guilty. If I am right, he deserves more than clemency. He deserves freedom.
This brings me back to Robert Chambliss, and why Rocky Myers’s trial troubles me so deeply.
Myers was represented by John Mays, a lawyer with deep, documented ties to the United Klans of America (Ku Klux Klan; KKK). For years, Mays spoke at Klan rallies and cross burnings, and served as the organization’s corporate counsel. After Chambliss was convicted of the church bombing, Mays even held a press conference declaring him innocent.
But I know the truth. Chambliss repented after I confronted him about his responsibility for those children’s deaths. He asked for God’s forgiveness.
Think about what that means. A poor Black man with intellectual limitations was forced to rely on a defense attorney who openly aligned himself with a terrorist organization best known for murderous violence against people who looked like his client. That is a moral crisis.
I say this as a pastor who grew up hearing the names Addie Mae, Denise, Carole, and Cynthia spoken the way you speak of the dead you love. Our community knows what it costs when hatred hides behind the law. We paid for that knowledge in the blood of children.
Scripture tells us that justice must roll down like waters. By that standard, what happened to Rocky Myers falls grievously short. At 85 years old, I know Alabama can do better. Rocky Myers deserves a fair trial. He has never had one.
For more information about Rocky Myers, visit www.justice4rockymyers.com.
In 1978, Chaplain Curtis Browder was appointed by Gov. George C. Wallace as Alabama’s first Black prison chaplain. He still ministers to incarcerated men and women across the state. His ministry was featured in the Academy Award-nominated documentary “The Alabama Solution.”
