Bomb scare rattles those touched by past political violence

NEW YORK (AP) – The wave of mail-bombs targeting prominent Democrats – though yet to claim any victims – has angered and dismayed some of the people personally affected by past acts of political violence in the United States.
Looking only at the past 60 years, there have been scores of deadly incidents motivated by some sort of ideology.
Perpetrators have ranged from Ku Klux Klan racists who have terrorized the United States for generations to members of the far-left Weather Underground who claimed responsibility for roughly two dozen property bombings in the 1970’s to anti-abortion extremists who have killed abortion-providing doctors.
The mail-bomb scare has reopened old wounds for Lisa McNair, whose life was shaped by a deadly blast a year before she was born: the Klan bombing that killed four black girls at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 15th, 1963. Her 11-year-old sister, Denise, was the youngest victim.
Many American families originally came to this country seeking to escape political violence. Some who have experienced similar acts in living memory are especially troubled by the alarmingly familiar feelings they are experiencing now. Americans of multiple political affiliations have condemned these acts of violence and expressed an interest in keeping conflict resolution civil.