Subscribe to Politics UpdatesCivil Rights Killing of 1965 Reopened
by
findingDulcinea Staff
An Alabaman grand jury indicts a former state trooper for the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson, whose death led to Bloody Sunday and the Civil Rights Act.
30 Second Summary
On February 18, 1965 James B. Fowler was a state trooper assigned to quell a civil disturbance in Selma, Alabama. What happened next has been in dispute ever since.
Fowler claimed that he shot in self-defense when Jimmie Lee Jackson attacked him. Civil rights historians tell a different story. They say that during the demonstration, the police beat Jackson's mother. When Jackson tried to defend her, Fowler shot him twice in the stomach. Jackson died eight days later.
Activists organized the historic Selma-to-Montgomery March to protest Jackson’s death. From that seminal event in the civil rights movement grew the Voting Rights Act of 1965, protecting the suffrage of African-Americans.
Alabaman District Attorney Michael W. Jackson, the lone African–American DA in Alabama and the first from Selma, reopened the Jackson case after he was elected in 2005.
The investigation is the latest in a series of belated civil rights–era prosecutions.
Fowler claimed that he shot in self-defense when Jimmie Lee Jackson attacked him. Civil rights historians tell a different story. They say that during the demonstration, the police beat Jackson's mother. When Jackson tried to defend her, Fowler shot him twice in the stomach. Jackson died eight days later.
Activists organized the historic Selma-to-Montgomery March to protest Jackson’s death. From that seminal event in the civil rights movement grew the Voting Rights Act of 1965, protecting the suffrage of African-Americans.
Alabaman District Attorney Michael W. Jackson, the lone African–American DA in Alabama and the first from Selma, reopened the Jackson case after he was elected in 2005.
The investigation is the latest in a series of belated civil rights–era prosecutions.
Headline
On May 10, 2007 former state trooper Fowler, 73, was charged with the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson in 1965. Fowler was allowed to remain free on a $250,000 property bond.
Source: The Washington Post
Reference Material
The Voting Rights Act came into being as a result of the unprovoked attack on protesters crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on March 7, 1965. Congress determined that additional legislation was required to enforce the 15th Amendment, which protects the rights of suffrage regardless of race. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the act on August 6, 1965.
Source: The U.S. Department of Justice
The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified on February 3, 1870. It declared that the “right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
Source: The 15th Ammendment
Background
In the initial inquiry into Jackson’s death, Fowler stated that Jackson assaulted him with a bottle and grabbed his pistol: “My backward movement away from him pulled my gun free from him and free from the holster. He hit me across the head, still coming toward me, and on the next blow which struck my hand the gun fired.”
Source: Local New Network WSFA12
The first Selma-to-Montgomery March was violently suppressed by the police before the protesters had time to cross the bridge out of Selma. That was on March 7, 1965, which is now commemorated as Bloody Sunday. In response, Martin Luther King, Jr. led a second march, which he intentionally took only as far as the first. After a federal district court judge ruled in favor of the marchers, the third demonstration went all the way to Montgomery. The final march gathered 25,000 demonstrators.
Source: Selma–to–Montgomery March
Related Links
On September 15, 1963 Ku Klux Klan members firebombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Four young girls died, and rioting ensued. Two of the perpetrators of that crime were arrested and sentenced only in 2002, after the case had been reopened that same year.
Source: Birmingham Public Library
The two Klansmen arrested in connection with the Birmingham bombing in 2002, Bobby Frank Cherry and Thomas Flanton, Jr., were brought to justice after Attorney General Bill Baxley reopened the investigation.
Source: Crime Library
The recent past has seen the FBI review hundreds of cold cases concerning civil rights-era killings in the Jim Crow South. “Dozens are currently under investigation,” according to this ZNet story.
Source: ZNet
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