BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - A one-time Ku Klux Klan member convicted in a church bombing that killed four black girls is up for parole in Alabama.
The state parole board has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday for 76-year-old Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr.
Blanton won't attend, but opponents of his release are expected to address the board.
Blanton was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2001 for being part of a group of Klansmen who planted a bomb outside Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963.
The deaths of the four girls who were killed became a symbol worldwide of the depth of racial hatred in the segregated South.
Blanton was the second of three people convicted in the bombing. Robert Chambliss and Bobby Frank Cherry both died in prison.
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