Ala. DA tries to solve ’65 civil rights killing

Victor Inge

MARION, Ala. — It was a warm, sunny early September afternoon. The district attorney had just finished a late lunch at Lottie’s restaurant across from the Perry County Courthouse.

As he does most afternoons, Michael Jackson embarked on a leisurely stroll back to the courthouse, walking off the fried fishplate, suit jacket flung over his shoulder. The only black district attorney in Alabama is squeezing more into each lunch hour these days, detouring for an interview that will hopefully offer some leads to his largest investigation yet.

He’s working on the case in his spare time, for now. There are plenty of murders, drug cases and other files that demand his immediate attention. But this day yields a start, though only a start, looking into the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a Perry County man whose 1965 death in this small, sleepy town helped spark the civil rights movement.

Only two years old at the time of Jimmie Lee’s death, the case has haunted Jackson since his days as an assistant prosecutor and presented itself as an opportunity to bring about some closure. This closure is needed, he says, because no one was ever prosecuted for Jimmie Lee’s death, a casualty in a people’s endeavor for human rights.

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley has posted a $5,000 reward for information leading to a conviction. The district attorney’s father, the late Claude Jackson, was elected and served as the first black chairman of the Sumter County Commission when Jackson was in high school.

Jackson, 42, went on to graduate from Centre College in Danville, Ky., and Florida State Law School in Tallahassee, Fla. He lived in Marion for a short time after law school, which is where his dream of bringing Jimmie Lee’s killer’s to justice began.

Jackson, no relation to Jimmie Lee, hopes the case follows several others that received justice delayed. The prosecution of Byron de la Beckwith for the 1963 death of Medgar Evers in Jackson, Miss., and the conviction of Robert “Dynamite Bob” Chambliss for the Ku Klux Klan bombing of a Birmingham church that took the lives of four little girls as they prepared for Sunday school.

Now, Jackson is building a case against a former Alabama state trooper who has admitted to killing Jimmie Lee, but says it was self-defense.

Making his way down the block from the courthouse, Jackson stops at a second-hand furniture shop. His introduction brings a smile to the owner’s face. Amzie Lucky, now in his 70s, said he had to run for his own life the night of Feb. 18, 1965.

“I was up here that night. When I saw them (state troopers) I thought they were coming to arrest us (protesters) but they didn’t. They came up and started beating us. I ran on back this way,” Lucky said, pointing over his shoulder and away from the courthouse.

“I heard the shot, but me and Jessie Lewis were trying to get away,” Lucky said. “We got away, but they had to carry me and Jessie to the hospital.”

They weren’t the only ones in need of treatment. There were reports of newsmen assigned to cover the mass voter registration meeting at Zion Methodist Church who had their camera lenses “sprayed with black spray paint,” according to sworn statements.

Following the meeting, a night march was planned. The troopers were there to halt the march.

The atmosphere was tense. Activist James Orange was held in the Perry County jail, and the late Albert Turner Sr. received a tip that Orange was going to be turned over to Klansmen that night and killed. To counter the Klan’s plan, Turner helped organize the candlelight march that drew about 500 protesters, chaos ensued.

In that number was Jackson’s mother, Viola, and her father, 82-year-old Cager Lee. When troopers attempted to break up the march to the jail, protesters scattered. According to sworn statements of a café owner, the elderly Lee and his daughter sought refuge inside.

“All I know is that white men came into the café pushing and beating,” said Viola Jackson in a sworn statement taken Feb. 23, 1965. “They knocked me to the floor and continued beating me while I was on the floor.”

According to sworn statements, the protesters were trying to get back inside the church and were seeking refuge wherever they could. Normareen Shaw, who was in charge of Mack’s Café, said she tried to close the door after troopers chased people inside, but to no avail.

“Troopers ran inside and started beating people,” Shaw said in her sworn affidavit. “I ran back into the kitchen and saw them beating Cager Lee. Jimmie Lee Jackson, his grandson, was standing near the counter and his sister was holding him.”

The focus turned to Jimmie Lee when he stepped in and tried to help his elderly grandfather. Cager said in his statement that the next time he saw his grandson he was running past him as troopers followed beating him, then he fell in a parking lot.

“They got him on the ground between the bus station and the Post Office,” Cager said in the statement. “I was passing by and I heard Jimmie Lee say, “I’m shot.’ Someone said, ‘Let’s take him to the doctor.”’

Jimmie Lee Jackson died at Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma on Feb. 26, 1965.

Former state trooper James Bonard Fowler admitted in April 2005 to shooting Jimmie Lee, but said, “it was in self defense.”

Earl Washburn, who was a Marion police officer in 1965 and believed to have been involved in Jimmie Lee’s death, took his own life about 10 years ago. He lived, ironically, just across the highway from Jimmie Lee’s only child.

After Jackson took office in January 2005, he met with the Alabama Bureau of Investigations, and he was assigned an agent, Johnny Tubbs, to assist with the investigation. Elected officials from throughout the Black Belt have lauded his effort, but not much evidence exists more than 40 years later. He said the best way to get justice is finding an eyewitness.

Jackson said Jimmie Lee’s death enraged protesters involved in the civil rights movement. At one time, there was talk of taking Jimmie Lee’s body to Montgomery and laying him on the steps of the capitol. This kind of talk led to the Selma to Montgomery March, Jackson said.

Jimmie Lee’s only child, Cordelia Billingsley, 45, said she feels it’s better late than never. Her grandmother, Viola, used to walk late at night at her father’s gravesite.

“I have memories of playing with him, but my only recollection was my mother lifting me up, seeing him lying in the casket,” Billingsley said. “

Billingsley said she feels her family needs closure. “I really do,” she said. “It’s worth going through. All he was trying to do was speak out, and help his people.”

Information from the Selma (Ala.) Times-Journal was used in this report.

(Associated Press)