There were more than three dozen unsolved racially motivated bombings in Birmingham during the Civil Rights era — mostly houses and churches. A frequent target was the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, leader of the Birmingham civil right movement.

And Drew says there was a pattern after the attacks. Authorities, including then Birmingham Police Commissioner Bull Connor, would accuse victims of planting the bombs.

"That's the most inhumane thing you could think of," Drew said. "Who would bomb their own house?"

But that rumor was widely circulated in white circles says Diane McWhorter, who wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Birmingham Civil Rights movement called Carry Me Home.

"The understood motive was that blacks were bombing their own churches and buildings in order to raise money and get publicity for the movement," she said.

She says it was repeated publicly by politicians, including Alabama's segregationist governor, George Wallace. Other common theories were that the bombings were ordered by Martin Luther King Jr., or were part of a communist plot, or were orchestrated by the FBI.

"It was repeated so often — I mean I grew up hearing this from my own father — that, you know, I think they started believing it," she said. "And part of the reason they were able to believe it was that, until the 16th Street Church bombing in September of 1963 when four young girls were murdered, there had been no real fatalities."