ATLANTA
The Rev. John H. Cross Jr., who dug through the rubble of his Alabama church looking for survivors of a bombing, then presided over a funeral for some of the youngest victims of civil rights-era violence, has died. He was 82.
Cross, who had been in failing health since a series of strokes, including internal bleeding and other medical problems, died Thursday at DeKalb Medical at Hillandale, his daughter, Barbara, said in a telephone interview Saturday.
In 1962, he became pastor of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, which had become a haven for civil rights activities. On Sept. 15, 1963, a bomb went off during preparations for a youth service.
Barbara Cross, who was 13 at the time of the bombing and was inside the church but not seriously injured, remembers that her father started digging through the debris right after the explosion.
“After the dynamite went off, it dug a large crater,” she recalled. “He had to go through that rubble to make sure all of the children were OK.”
As he dug, other people there told him to stop, worried that there could be another blast.
