<p>J.B. Stoner, an anti-Semite and white supremacist convicted of a church bombing in the civil rights era, died Saturday at a northwest Georgia nursing home. He was 81.</p><p>Stoner died of complications of pneumonia, said a relative, Judith Ragon.</p><p>A Georgia native, Stoner was one of the angriest voices in opposition to the civil rights movement. He revived a dormant chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Chattanooga, Tenn., at age 18. A few years later he headed the Stoner Christian Anti-Jewish Party.</p><p>Stoner was a suspect in the 1958 bombing of an empty Birmingham, Ala., church. Stoner wasn't indicted for the crime until 1977, and he fought extradition to Alabama for three years. At his trial, he was convicted in part on the basis of venomous quotes he'd made at the time. When asked if he made one hateful quote from an old newspaper clipping, Stoner replied, "I don't think I said that, but I wish I had." A mostly white jury found him guilty in 90 minutes.</p><p>But Stoner appealed the verdict and went missing for several months in 1983 when his appeals ran out. Stoner ultimately turned himself in at a motel in Montgomery, Ala., and served 3 1/2 years in prison.</p><p>It was the end of a long career fighting integration.</p><p>In 1964, Stoner arrived in St. Augustine, Fla., on the heels of Martin Luther King Jr. to organize a counter-demonstration. His rhetoric inflamed passions, which led to mobs of whites attacking blacks.</p><p>Stoner later became the appeals attorney for James Earl Ray, King's assassin, and long tried to get his case reversed.</p><p>In 1970, Stoner ran unsuccessfully for Georgia governor in a race Jimmy Carter eventually won. In 1972, he ran for the U.S. Senate. In 1974, he drew 73,000 votes, almost 10 percent, in a race for lieutenant governor.</p><p>In 1986, he was paroled from an Alabama prison at the age of 62. He ran for lieutenant governor in 1990 and got 31,000 votes, or 3 percent of the total.</p><p>Stoner suffered a stroke in 2001. He never married, once telling an interviewer any woman "would be too dumb" for him. He is survived by two sisters in their 80s.</p><p>In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last year, Stoner remained unapologetic for his separatist views. "I guess God will put his hand on my head and bless me," he said.</p><p>Stoner was buried Tuesday at Forest Hills Cemetery in Chattanooga, Tenn., Ragon said.</p>
