Nashville police are reopening the investigations into three unsolved Civil Rights era bombings a local author believes were perpetrated by a network of racist terrorists in the South while the FBI turned a blind eye.

Mayor Freddie O’Connell announced July 13 that he asked the Metro Nashville Police Department to assign an investigator in the department’s cold case unit to lead investigations into the bombings of Hattie Cotton Elementary School, the Jewish Community Center and the home of city council member and prominent civil rights attorney Z. Alexander Looby between 1957 and 1960.
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O’Connell made the announcement at the book launch of “Dynamite Nashville: Unmasking the FBI, the KKK and the Bombers Beyond Their Control” by Betsy Phillips, a writer, historian and columnist for the Nashville Scene.
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The “Confederate Underground,” a secret network of terrorists with ties to the Ku Klux Klan throughout the South pushing back against integration and the Civil Rights Movement, was likely the group behind the attacks, she said. Phillips said her book also shows how the FBI appears to have been involved to varying degrees in some of the bombings, including being warned ahead of time of the attacks and not cooperating in local police’s investigations.