In the 38-plus years since the bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church, Alabama has been reborn. And in the process, Bobby Frank Cherry, once a lord of his universe, became an embarrassing relic of a shameful past-- a reminder of a South where the killing and torture of black folks (or at least troublesome, uppity black folks) was a sanctioned sport, tolerated, if not always celebrated, by the region's leading lights.

In this enlightened age of tolerance and presumed equal opportunity, even most of Cherry's fellow Southerners consider him to be one step removed from excrement-the "human equivalent of a cockroach," as his own lawyer put it. No one of standing in the South today would dare try to justify the 1963 bombing that left four black girls dead at the hands of Cherry and his Ku Klux Klan cohorts. But despite all that has changed since that sad September Sunday, Cherry's conviction last week of four counts of first-degree murder was never foreordained. Even last year, when co-conspirator Thomas Blanton Jr. was found guilty, Cherry remained unrepentant and also unpunished-- thanks to a judge's ruling that he was mentally incompetent to stand trial. Only after spirited community protests and psychological reassessments did the judge reverse himself, concluding that Cherry was feigning dementia. (Two other participants in the bombing had been identified. One, Robert Chambliss, was convicted in 1977, and the other, Herman Cash, died in 1994, never having been charged.) Still, until last Wednesday, when a jury of nine whites and three blacks found Cherry guilty, there was widespread speculation-especially in Birmingham's black community-that Cherry might yet escape justice; that instead of a conviction Birmingham would find itself with a hung jury-which, many in Birmingham feared, would mean not only another painful trial, but public protests, and maybe riots.

So a sense of relief greeted the verdicts. "For 39 years we came to the justice table and our plate was always empty… They finally put something in our plate," said Frank Matthews, a popular former radio talk show host and black community activist who plans to run for mayor next year. At a vigil at the 16th Street Baptist Church to mark the end of the ordeal, there was a mood of celebration-a sense, at least for some, that Birmingham could finally move on, free at last of the taint of the past.

Given what Birmingham once was, the very idea that whites could find fellow whites guilty of a crime against blacks struck Christopher Mosley, an aide to the head of the city council, as something incredibly positive. For Mosley it signifies that the city may have reached a point where "people will have some confidence in the judicial system."

But that is not quite the same as saying Birmingham has become colorblind. Even James Rotch, a prominent white lawyer who has made racial reconciliation a personal mission, is reluctant to declare the Old South entirely dead. Rotch went on the air after Cherry's conviction to talk about the verdict and about the "Birmingham Pledge" (a voluntary agreement he created and that he urges people to sign eschewing racial prejudice and discrimination). Later he returned to his office to the news that four hate calls had just come in. "These kinds of people are still out there and they're not going to change their attitudes over this verdict or anything else," he said, and then added, a hint of hope in his voice, "but the number of people who think like that is far, far less."

After the trial, as Birmingham collectively exhaled, there was much talk of closure, of racial healing; but some Birmingham residents, including Matthews, were not buying. "It's not closure when you still have a racial, economic divide," he said, noting that Birmingham remains one of the most segregated cities in the nation. Myrna Jackson, vice president of the NAACP, likewise saw little reason for rejoicing. She saw the verdict as nothing more than white Birmingham's attempt to "pacify us for a short period," while ignoring huge and continuing economic and education disparities.

There is indeed something extraordinarily fanciful in the idea that a trial could heal a city. Cities, after all, are not like individual people. They don't bear deep psychic wounds or cry from broken hearts. But though cities don't weep, they do crumble; and, sometimes, they burn. This latest verdict may not have been healing in the grand sense of the word, but it was nonetheless important. Perhaps it's best seen as the judicial equivalent of putting up a firewall, of isolating and containing smoldering embers of resentment-embers that, burning free, could easily flare up, destroying the enlightened image Birmingham's leaders have worked so hard to promote, along with the fragile peace they are determined to maintain.