Mental tests call for ex-Klansman accused of church bombing

Prosecutors asked an Alabama court yesterday to confine a former Ku Klux Klansman to a state mental hospital to determine if he is competent for trial in a church bombing that killed four black girls.

The request came amid protests by blacks in the state who claim Bobby Frank Cherry, who belonged to the white supremacy group, should stand trial immediately in the 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.