Ga. county won’t support federal probe of ’46 murder

Elliott Minor

BUTLER, Ga. — The leaders of rural Taylor County declined last Tuesday to act on a request from two civil rights groups to support a federal investigation into the unsolved 1946 killing of a black World War II veteran, leading the victim’s aging relatives to storm out of a county commission meeting.

Maceo Snipes served in the Pacific during World War II and returned home to make history: He became the first black person to vote in Taylor County.

But a day after casting his ballot, he was mortally wounded.

Relatives say the 37-year-old was shot in the back by four white men in 1946 and collapsed in the doorway of his farm house about 90 miles south of Atlanta. He died two days later.

Even though his death certificate lists his cause of death as “gunshot wound by homicide,” there is no evidence of a criminal investigation into the killing and no one was arrested.

State officials of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Prison & Jail Project, a prison advocacy and civil rights group, presented their request for a federal probe into the 60-year-old unsolved killing to the Taylor County Commission last Tuesday, asking the commissioners to support the effort before mailing their written request to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

“What better way for the county commission to show their support for justice than by joining this initiative,” said state NAACP President Edward DuBose of Columbus, himself a 21-year Army veteran.

But the victim’s relatives and activists left the county commission meeting to protest one commission member’s line of questioning.

At one point during the meeting, commission member Patty Carson-James, who is black and who said that she is a member of the local NAACP branch, asked Snipes’ relatives whether they were members of the NAACP.

John Cole Vodicka, leader of the Prison & Jail Project, objected to the question, and a commission member ordered the sheriff to escort Vodicka out of the meeting. Vodicka, the NAACP’s DuBose and the family members left soon after.

Carson-James later said the civil rights groups did not need the commission’s support for the probe, and that locals resent outsiders telling them what to do.

“We’re here trying to pave roads, get jobs and help our sheriff get drugs off the street,” she said.

DuBose called the commission’s response to the investigation request “the worst display of disrespect for citizens.”

Snipes was shot on July 18, 1946, a day after he voted in the Georgia Democratic Primary. He died on July 20. Fearful relatives buried him at night in an unmarked grave before some family members fled the county, relocating as far north as Ohio. Some say they still do not know the location of Snipes’ grave.

“It wrecked our family for a long time,” said the deceased’s 66-year-old cousin, Felix Snipes, who was 6 at the time. “The older generation still doesn’t want to talk about it.”

The killing was overshadowed by the lynchings five days later of two black couples — also including a WWII veteran — some 90 miles away near Monroe, that prompted former President Harry Truman to dispatch the FBI to investigate that case, which also remains unsolved.

Vodicka said he has studied the Snipes case and interviewed older residents about the crime, and is convinced that the veteran was killed for simply voting.

“He managed to escape being hurt or killed ... fighting for his country, but when he came home and dared to exercise a right that he had fought to defend, he was killed by citizens of his own country,” Vodicka said.

It was rumored that Snipes pulled a knife on his attackers, an allegation his relatives deny.

“One of the real tragedies of this case, in addition to a man being killed because of his skin color, is that the victim is falsely accused of doing something to bring on his demise,” Vodicka said.

“As far as we know, all the suspects that were involved are dead,” he added. “But we want the truth of what happened. That simply means we want those responsible for his murder named, and we want Maceo Snipes’ name cleared.”

A coroner’s inquest was conducted to determine the cause of Snipes’ death, but the case was never presented to a grand jury or a prosecutor, Vodicka said.

Gary Lowe, the county’s current coroner, said he had never heard of the Snipes case and that the sheriff and coroner who served at that time had both died.

A secretary in the sheriff’s office said it is unlikely they still have investigative reports from the 1940s.

“I want somebody held accountable for killing my uncle,” said Lulu Montfort, 73, who was 13 when Snipes was killed. “They’re probably all dead now, but people need to know that my uncle didn’t do anything to deserve death.”

After the murder, frightened family members loaded her and her brothers and sisters into the rear of a pickup truck, covered them with a tarpaulin and whisked them away 45 miles to Macon, where some caught a train to Ohio, she said.

“Every person in the state of Georgia needs to know that somebody died for that right to vote — a right we take for granted,” she said.

(Associated Press)