Jimmie Lee Jackson –
by
John C Abercrombie
The fight for basic civil rights such as the right to vote, was a long arduous task in Alabama. In the 1960’s. Jimmy Lee Jackson was one of the leaders in Alabama attempting to register and vote. He paid the ultimate price with his life taken at the hands of an Alabama State Trooper named James Bonard Fowler.
Jimmie Lee Jackson was born in Marion, Alabama a small town outside of Selma, Alabama to Jimmie Lee and Viola Jackson, December 16, 1938. By 1965, he was a veteran, a civil rights activist, and a deacon in his church.
The fight for the right to vote was a continuing struggle and in a prior protest to gain the right to vote James Orange, a minister and worker for the SCLC was arrested. He was jailed and later convicted on a charge of contributing to the delinquency of minors for enlisting teens to work in voter registration drives and encouraging them to sing freedom songs at the courthouse. It was Rev James Orange’s detention that caused people to fear that he would be Lynched. As in the post on Edmond Pettus, you can see that Alabama and the City of Selma has had a large number of Lynchings of people who fought for their rights of citizenship. A march was organized to support Orange.
After the Civil War, the country went through a period of Reconstruction from 1863 to 1877. It was a significant event in Civil Rights. The newly freed slaves were now citizens with rights guaranteed by constitutional amendments. During this period, Blacks were elected to local, state, and federal positions. This infuriated Whites who were used to and depended on these people for free labor to become rich.
It must be kept in mind that all Whites did not own slaves, but those who did became prosperous on the backs of the slaves who they owned. They were not in the business of respecting the humanity of the slaves. They held all positions of power and passed laws that favored the large property owners at the expense of both poor Whites and slaves.
The large wealthy landowners found themselves no longer in control and they resented it. They were willing to do any and everything to regain control. They pitted the poor Whites against the now ex slaves and were willing to do anything legal or otherwise to regain that control. They resorted to terrorism and violence to regain control.
In order to “lord” it over Blacks, the previously powerful Whites fought tooth and nail to take away the vote and regain control and solicited the poor Whites to do the dirty work.
During the march in support of Orange on February 18, 1965 the group came upon a cluster of Marion City police, county sheriff’s deputies and the notorious Alabama State Troopers. It is reported that the street lights were suddenly turned off or as some witnesses report were shot out by police. The law enforcement officers then began to beat the peaceful protesters. The crowd fled to avoid being beaten by Alabama State troopers. The unarmed and peaceful protesters were singing songs as they marched. 2 United Press International photographers documenting the event were also beaten by police and their cameras destroyed.
Jimmie Lee Jackson was with his mother and grandfather, Cager Lee, aged 82. Jackson, his mother, and grandfather sought refuge in Mack’s Café. 10 troopers chased them into the building clubbing and beating them when Trooper James Bonard Fowler shot Jackson twice in the stomach. As the trio fled, trooper Fowler followed and continued to beat Jackson with his night stick, inflicting a severe laceration to his scalp after shooting him.
In the days of segregation, many people died because White hospitals refused treatment to non-Whites, regardless of the seriousness of the injury or disease. This happened to Jackson who had to be transferred to a Black hospital 30 miles away with his intestines protruding from his abdomen in the unsanitary conditions of a private vehicle.
Many people are shocked today at video of Blacks being beaten by police; however, this is nothing new. The brutality, frequency, and prevalence of acts of savagery were rampant during and after this period. In addition to police, White people rarely faced charges for these acts and if they were tried, were found innocent by all-White juries.
As you view the accompanying videos, you will find an interesting video featuring the nurse who tended Jackson in the hospital before his death.
While Jackson was improving and in good spirits, 2 White doctors insisted that he needed additional surgery and faced strong opposition from the Black doctor who was treating him. They persuaded the hospital to proceed with the surgery which they performed. It was then that Jackson died of his “injuries” or was he?
It was these circumstances that led to the protest march for voter rights led by future Congressman John Robert Lewis and became known as “Bloody Sunday” where Lewis suffered a fractured skull because of the brutality of the Alabama State Troopers.
We see once again that important figures in the fight for voter rights and standing for the rights of citizenship were left out of history. We are often left with the inaccurate view that slaves were happy being enslaved and denied the rights of citizenship when in reality they fought against a racist apartheid government.
We don’t normally associate the word apartheid with America, but with South Africa, however it is a practice of strict segregation of the races which is the very definition of what was and in some cases is still being practiced in the United States.
The Edmond Pettus bridge and the town of Selma was a continuation of a long hard struggle on the part of American citizens who had been granted citizenship and the right to vote by the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments.
The Voting Rights Act off 1965 prohibited racial discrimination in voting and was signed by Lyndon B Johnson 36th President of the United States August 6, 1965. The Act was designed to enforce the voting rights guaranteed by the 14th and 15th amendment to the United States Constitution. The problems of voting were exacerbated in the South.
In 2013 Under the Roberts court gutted the act and the fight continues as states continue to place impediments in the road to voting for Black and Brown voters. The struggle continues …
The reason we are aware of “Bloody Sunday” is that it was televised, otherwise it would also have been excluded from history.
James Bonard Fowler, the Alabama State Trooper who shot and beat Jimmie Lee Fowler was not indicted by an all-White grand jury that year. In 2005 Fowler acknowledged that he had shot Jackson.
Fowler has an interesting past. After the shooting he was reassigned to Birmingham and was fired after physically attacking his supervisor. He enlisted in the US Army and served with valor, being awarded 2 Silver Stars and a Purple Heart, and continued to live in Thailand afterwards. While in Thailand he was convicted of heroin trafficking and served 5 years in a Thai prison. He returned to Alabama in 1996.
In 2007 Fowler was being investigated by the FBI for the 1966 shooting of Nathan Johnson a Black man fatally shot after being taken to the Alabama jail.
At the age of 73, 42 years after killing Jimmie Lee Jackson, Fowler was indicted by the district of Geneva County for the homicide. The date was May 10, 2007.
Fowler pleaded guilty to second degree manslaughter. He apologized, however, he insisted that he acted in self-defense. Fowler was sentenced to 6 months in state prison and released early after 5 months due to health problems that required surgery.
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Jimmy Lee Jackson
Jimmie Lee Jackson Documentary
A short little film based on the life and impact of the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson
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The Selma Campaign: Martin Luther King Jr., Jimmie Lee Jackson, and the Defining Struggle of the Civil Rights Era
Troopers, advance! Those two words, shouted by a police commander in Selma, Alabama, some 50 years ago, changed the course of U.S. history. The date was March 7, 1965. The scene was the Edmund Pettus Bridge. And the resulting violence spurred an appalled nation into action. The Selma Campaign chronicles one of the most successful – and deadly – protest campaigns of the Civil Rights era. In doing so, it renders a fascinating portrait of life in the Deep South during the mid-1960s. Author Craig Swanson focuses special attention on the movement’s “foot soldiers,” those otherwise ordinary people who gave so much of themselves in seeking the ability to vote despite the constant threat of personal harm. Beginning with Martin Luther King’s selection of Selma, Alabama, as the site for his voting rights campaign and concluding with legal proceedings against a state trooper whose gunfire precipitated the now-famous march to Montgomery, “The Selma Campaign” is the definitive word on a remarkable series of events that culminated in what many consider the country’s single most important piece of civil rights legislation.
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Dying for the Right to Vote: Remembering the Selma Martyrs, from Jimmie Lee Jackson to Viola Liuzzo
As we continue our coverage of the 50th anniversary of the historic Selma to Montgomery marches, we look at the civil rights martyrs who lost their lives in the fight to secure voting rights in Alabama. Between February and August of 1964, four civil rights activists were killed in Alabama: Jimmie Lee Jackson, Viola Liuzzo, Rev. James Reeb and Jonathan Daniels. As tens of thousands of people marked the 50th anniversary in Selma, Democracy Now! spoke to marchers who were honoring these civil rights martyrs.
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Who is Jimmie Lee Jackson
Civil rights activist Jimmy Lee Jackson (1938-1965) was a Jimmy Lee Jackson tragic death at 26 years old at the hands of an Alabama state trooper during a small protest in Marion, Perry County. His death was eulogized by Martin Luther King Jr., and other movement leaders called for a march from Selma to Montgomery to protest Jackson’s death and advocate for voting rights. That March 7 event ended prematurely with a violent response from law enforcement that quickly became known as “Bloody Sunday,” but it prompted federal lawmakers to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
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Vera Booker, the Nurse Who Treated Jimmie Lee Jackson The Night He Was Shot
Jimmie Lee Jackson’s martyrdom inspired the the march that led to Bloody Sunday, and, ultimately the complete March from Selma to Montgomery. Nurse Vera Booker tells the story of his hospital stay before his passing. (Recorded March 5, 2016 at the Jubilee Foot Soldiers Breakfast in Selma, Alabama.)
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Who Really Killed Jimmie Lee Jackson?
Reported for the first time by Civil Rights icon Andrew Young, newly revealed evidence raises questions in one of the most notorious killings in Alabama history.
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Former Alabama State Trooper Pleads Guilty to Killing Black Civil Rights Worker in 1965 1 of 2
A white former Alabama state trooper has pleaded guilty to killing a black civil rights worker 45 years ago at the height of the civil rights movement. Seventy-seven-year-old James Bonard Fowler was sentenced to six months in prison for the 1965 shooting of 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson during a melee in a restaurant in Marion, Alabama. Democracy Now! speaks to John Fleming, the reporter to whom Fowler first confessed, and Democratic Congress member John Lewis of Georgia, a leading figure of the civil rights movement.
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Former Alabama State Trooper Pleads Guilty to Killing Black Civil Rights Worker in 1965 2 of 2
A white former Alabama state trooper has pleaded guilty to killing a black civil rights worker 45 years ago at the height of the civil rights movement. Seventy-seven-year-old James Bonard Fowler was sentenced to six months in prison for the 1965 shooting of 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson during a melee in a restaurant in Marion, Alabama. Democracy Now! speaks to John Fleming, the reporter to whom Fowler first confessed, and Democratic Congress member John Lewis of Georgia, a leading figure of the civil rights movement.
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