Birmingham, Ala. ? A racially mixed jury convicted former Klansman Bobby Frank Cherry of murder Wednesday for the 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls and shook the nation’s soul.

The verdict, reached in less than seven hours of deliberation, brought tears from relatives on both sides and a statement of defiance from the 71-year-old defendant, who was automatically sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Rescuers and church officials stand in the ruins of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., in this Sept. 15, 1963, file photo. A jury Wednesday convicted former Ku Klux Klansman Bobby Frank Cherry of first-degree murder in the bombing, which killed four girls.

Asked by the judge whether he had any comment, Cherry stood and pointed directly at prosecutors.

“This whole bunch lied all the way through this thing,” he said, his Southern drawl steady and clear in the courtroom. “I told the truth. I don’t know why I’m going to jail for nothing.”

The attack at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was the deadliest of the civil rights era. The murder of young girls gathering at church for worship also exposed the chilling depth of racial hatred that black protesters faced in the Deep South and helped bring racial moderates off the sidelines in the civil rights struggle.

Within two years, as protests spread in the wake of the bombing, federal civil rights and voting rights laws were passed by Congress.

Cherry will be the last suspect tried in the blast. Two other ex-Klansmen were convicted earlier and sent to prison and a fourth suspect died without being charged.

Eunice Davis, sister of victim Cynthia Wesley, rocked in her seat and wept as Cherry was led out of the crowded courtroom in handcuffs. “It’s time. It’s time,” she said.

“We feel like we can go on with our lives now,” added Junie Collins Peevy, sister of victim Addie Mae Collins.

The jury of nine whites and three blacks returned the verdict after a weeklong trial that was filled with haunting images from the nation’s segregationist past and witnesses with admittedly faded memories.

Prosecutors showed jurors morgue photos of the torn and bloodied victims: Wesley, Collins and Carole Robertson, all 14; and Denise McNair, 11. The gruesome images were shown as the girls’ relatives sat in the front row of the courtroom, as they did throughout the trial.

The bomb shook downtown Birmingham shortly after 10 a.m. as church members prepared for a youth-led Sunday worship service on Sept. 15, 1963. The city’s public schools had been integrated a few days earlier after a six-year court fight, and tensions had been running high for much of the year.

Evidence showed Cherry was a suspect within days of the bombing, and he moved his family to Texas in the early 1970s as authorities in Alabama continued to question him about the bombing. A retired trucker, he most recently lived in the town of Mabank, southeast of Dallas.

Cherry always denied involvement in the bombing, both publicly and in a series of interviews with investigators.

But prosecutors reopened the case in 1995 and found five estranged family members and acquaintances who said Cherry boasted of his involvement in the crime.

“He said he lit the fuse,” testified ex-wife Willadean Brogdon.