J. B. Stoner, 81, Fervent Racist and Benchmark for Extremism, Dies
NY Times
J. B. Stoner, an unapologetic racist whose conviction for bombing a church, divisive political campaigns and vituperations about Jews and blacks made him a benchmark for racial extremism in the United States, died on Saturday at a nursing home in La Fayette, Ga. He was 81.
The cause was complications of pneumonia, Judith Ragon, wife of Mr. Stoner’s second cousin, Ronald Ragon, told The Associated Press.
Mr. Stoner’s views were so immoderate that Lester Maddox, an avowedly segregationist governor of Georgia, once refused to share the same stage with him. Mr. Stoner was convicted in 1980 of the 1958 bombing of a church in Birmingham, Ala., and was suspected by prosecutors in as many as a dozen others.
