The Evil That Won’t Go Away

The letter bombs that killed U.S. Appeals Court Judge Robert S. Vance in Birmingham, Ala., and Robert E. Robinson, a lawyer and city alderman in Savannah, may be related and racially motivated incidents, according to the FBI and Justice Department. If so, the assassinations conjure up painful memories of more frightening times when white-sheeted Klansmen rode through the night kidnaping and killing blacks, Jews and Catholics. The murders evoke an uglier era when bombings were common and funerals were a tragic part of the civil rights movement.

The packages appeared ordinary, the kind of brown-wrapped parcels the size of shoe boxes that are common in the mail this time of year. Two additional and nearly identical bombs were discovered earlier this week at the headquarters of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta and the branch office of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People in Jacksonville, Fla. Fortunately, vigilant bomb experts defused the explosive devices before they could cause any damage. On Friday, another bomb seriously injured a Maryland judge, but authorities have made no connection between that device and the bombs that killed the judge and lawyer.

The NAACP, the venerable civil rights organization, is now taking precautions, the same kinds of precautions that had to be taken more than 25 years ago when four little girls were blown up in a church in Birmingham. Lawyers, like Robinson, who have argued school desegregation cases, redistricting suits or other civil rights matters before the 11th Circuit Court, are also adopting safety measures. Stricter security may ferret out a bomb that comes through the mail, but there is no absolute protection against terrorism.

The murdered judge and lawyer shared a common activism. They worked within the federal judicial system, long a protector of civil rights, to effect change in this nation. Their deaths have prompted grief, fear and rage. Their murders must also prompt a refusal to give in to desperate attempts at intimidation, a national resolve to continue the fight to uphold the principles expressed in the Constitution for all Americans.