Vol. 71/No. 23      June 11, 2007

In 1965, a 26-year-old Black man, Jimmie Lee Jackson, was killed by an Alabama state trooper when police savagely attacked a civil rights march in Marion, Alabama. Nothing happened to the cop at the time, when it was common for Klansmen and police in the South to terrorize and often kill African Americans or other protesters for civil rights, and for all-white juries to acquit the perpetrators.

Two years ago, James Bonard Fowler, the former police officer responsible in this case, admitted publicly in an interview with the Anniston Star that he had indeed shot Jackson. John Fleming, the Star’s editor-at-large, wrote at the time, “Speaking on the record for the first time, the former trooper, while showing scant remorse in describing the events of Feb. 18, 1965, says he doesn’t fear the possibility of prosecution.”

Fowler’s coarse stance was an affront to Blacks and other working people here. He expected impunity, but misread the situation. Weeks before Fleming’s interview, Mississippi Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen was arrested for helping to organize the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers.

It took two more years, but on May 9 Fowler was indicted on murder charges by a grand jury in Marion.  
 
Fight for voting rights
Jackson was a young working farmer who grew up in Marion. He was active in the mass movement for Black freedom, especially the fight for voting rights. He had tried to register to vote five times.

On the evening of Feb. 18, 1965, Jackson participated in a civil rights meeting. The gathering turned into a night march. In an orderly fashion, hundreds of protesters filed out of the church where the meeting was held. They came face-to-face with a phalanx of cops, including 50 state troopers dispatched to break up the action, and a growing mob of white racists. Someone then switched off the street lights and the cops set upon every protester in reach with their billy clubs.

News reporters, who had been instructed by the police to use “no lights that might temporarily blind or otherwise interfere with our work,” were attacked by the mob and their cameras destroyed so that no photographic record of the attack would exist.

The cops followed people as they ran for cover, like the group that fled to nearby Mack’s Café. The May 10, 2007, Anniston Star recounts what happened then: “The cafe operator said 82-year-old Cager Lee was clubbed to the floor along with his daughter, Viola Jackson, whose son, Jimmie Lee Jackson, was shot trying to help them.” Jackson then ran outside, where the cops clubbed him down.

The young man died eight days later due to massive infection. The infection was probably worsened by delays in treatment. The admitting nurse told the New York Times that she understood Jackson had been turned away from the first place he was carried—Perry County Hospital in Marion—“because he was a Negro.” He ended up in a Catholic hospital in Selma “operated primarily for Negroes.”

Thousands turned out for Jackson’s funeral. A banner was draped over the entrance to the chapel that read, “Racism killed our brother.”

Outrage over Jackson’s death sparked a mass march from nearby Selma to Montgomery, the state capital, to press the demand for voting rights for Blacks. The first attempt to get to Montgomery was met with a cop riot that became known as “Bloody Sunday.” That time the cameras were rolling and images flashed across the world as marchers were beaten viciously.

But the struggle continued, and the federal Voting Rights Act was signed into law six months later, on Aug. 6, 1965.  
 
Cover-up
From his hospital bed, Jackson gave a statement about the shooting to his lawyer in the presence of FBI agents. His statement was not made public at the time and has never been seen since. If the FBI or local investigators wrote a report, it was filed without action being taken.

The local prosecutor, Blanchard McLeod, told the New York Times at the time that he had a signed statement from the man who shot Jackson. McLeod refused to identify the shooter, saying he would turn over the results of his “investigation” to the Perry County grand jury, which in turn declined to indict anyone. The cop involved, Fowler, claimed that Jackson tried to remove the trooper’s gun from his holster, and he fired the fatal shot in self-defense.

But no investigation was carried out to bring Jackson’s killer to justice. As a matter of fact, while Jackson was in his hospital bed, he was served an arrest warrant.

In the aftermath of the cop attack on the February 18 march, the Alabama state senate showed their support for the all-white police force by denouncing any charges of negligence against the troopers who brutalized and killed in Marion.

Fowler killed again before voluntarily leaving the force in 1968. His next victim was Nathan Johnson, Jr., a Black prisoner in Alabaster city jail. According to the Selma Times Journal, “Fowler said the man [Johnson] attempted to take his weapon—similar to what troopers reported happened in the case of Jimmie Lee inside Mack’s Café the year before.”

Since 1989, authorities in seven states have reexamined 30 killings from the civil rights era. They have made 29 arrests and obtained 22 convictions so far.

Indicting Jackson’s killer is only the first step in this case. Fowler will have to be deemed competent to stand trial. A jury will have to be picked. A trial will have to be held. Many witnesses are deceased. But the case is back in the news and that has sparked interest in getting to the bottom of countless other cases of racist killings that have yet to be investigated.

Tamar Rosenfeld is a sewing machine operator in Anniston, Alabama, and a member of UNITE HERE Local 1021-C.  
 
 
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