In this week’s issue of TheDefendersOnline we are featuring the 1971 firebombing of former LDF Director-Counsel Julius Chambers’ law office in downtown Charlotte, North Carolina.

A fire, believed to have been deliberately set at about 4:30 in the morning on February 5th, gutted the offices belonging to Chambers and his partners. It took 50 men, with seven trucks, about an hour to get the fire under control. Firemen said a chemical was used to set the fire. Damage to the 14-room frame building located at 216 West 10th Street exceeded $50,000 and many legal records were completely destroyed. At the time of the firebombing, Chambers was representing black plaintiffs in a Charlotte school desegregation case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Fortunately, the files for the controversial case were all saved.

Here is a chronology of other attacks on Chambers:

Spring 1965
Chambers’ car was dynamited in New Bern while speaking at a civil rights rally in a church. Three Ku Klux Klansmen were arrested and received suspended sentences.

November 1965
Chambers’ Charlotte home was bombed, along with the homes of three other black leaders. No one was ever charged in those incidents.

August 1970
A repair garage run by Chambers’ father was firebombed.

January 1971
Chambers’ father’s garage burned again. Like the first one at the garage, the second was never solved.