Doug Jones: The Republican Party Is Losing Its Soul
Doug Jones was just 9 years old when Ku Klux Klan members bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The 1963 blast killed four young girls and awakened the nation to the dangerous struggle for civil rights in the Deep South.
Growing up in Fairfield, just outside the city, Jones has vivid memories of Governor George Wallace standing in the doorway at the University of Alabama to prevent black students from entering, a racist act that one of the bombers later said inspired him to commit terrorism.
Nearly 40 years later, as United States attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, Jones prosecuted Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry for their roles in the bombing. The delayed justice for the families of the victims and the surrounding community was a step forward, he says—but there's still more to be done, and he sees some of Wallace in President Donald Trump.
That's what inspired him to write his new book, (All Points Books). Jones, now a U.S. senator after winning a
