Marion, Ala. – A 73-year-old retired state trooper was indicted Wednesday in the 1965 shooting death of a black man – a killing that set in motion the historic civil-rights protests in Selma that led to passage of the Voting Rights Act.
District Attorney Michael Jackson said a grand jury returned an indictment in the case. He would not identify the person charged or specify the offense until the indictment is served, which could take a few days. But a lawyer for former Trooper James Bonard Fowler said he had been informed the retired lawman had been charged.
It took the grand jury only two hours to return the indictment in the slaying of 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was shot by Fowler during a civil-rights protest that turned into a club- swinging melee.
Fowler contended he fired in self-defense after Jackson grabbed his gun from its holster.
Calls to his home were not immediately returned Wednesday.
“I think somebody is trying to rewrite history, and I don’t think it’s fair to this trooper,” said Fowler’s attorney, George Beck.
The indictment is the latest in a series of civil-rights-era cases across the South that have been resurrected for prosecution after lying dormant for decades. In recent years, prosecutors have won convictions in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four black girls and in the 1964 killings of three civil-rights volunteers near Philadelphia, Miss.
In light of those cases, people in Alabama began to call for a new examination of Jackson’s death.
Jackson’s daughter, Cordelia Heard Billingsley of Marion, who was 4 at the time of the killing, said: “We’ll finally know what happened. My grandchildren have asked me questions, and I couldn’t give them answers.”
Fowler was among a contingent of law officers sent to Marion on the night of Feb. 18, 1965.
According to witnesses, about 500 people were marching from a church toward the city jail to protest the jailing of a civil- rights worker when the street lights went out.
Troopers contended the crowd refused orders to disperse. Soon law officers began swinging billy clubs, with marchers fleeing.
A group of protesters ran into Mack’s Cafe, pursued by troopers. 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. He died two days later.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. arrived to preach at Jackson’s funeral, and in reaction to the killing, black civil-rights demonstrators set out on March 7, 1965, on a march from Selma to Montgomery.
They were routed by club- swinging officers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge at Selma, an attack known as “Bloody Sunday.” Those events prompted Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which transformed the political makeup of the South by ending various segregationist practices that prevented blacks from voting.
