Jimmie Lee Jackson

Southern Poverty Law Center

Today's topic: Jimmie Lee Jackson
Background:
Born in Alabama, Jimmie Lee Jackson became part of the Civil Rights Movement when he and his family were denied the right to register to vote in 1962. At the age of 25, he was elected as the youngest ever deacon to serve his church. Living in Marion, Alabama, Jackson began his activism by writing a federal judge and participating in peaceful boycotts and protests.
Hearing from people who participated in protests in Selma, less than 30 miles away, Jackson joined a march in Marion on February 18, 1965. The march was met by state troopers a mere block from where they began. When the troopers began to violently swing clubs at them, the marchers scattered, and Jackson swept his mother into a cafe. The troopers came in, broke the lights, and hit Jackson's mother. Jackson attempting to protect his mother was shot in the stomach by a state trooper. Jimmie Lee Jackson died eight days later.
Sara Bullard writes, "The death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, at the hands of a man sworn to uphold the law, put the followers of nonviolence to a tremendous test. In the past 18 months, they had seen five murders in Alabama and six in Mississippi." On March 21, 1965, Jackson's grandmother marched alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery.
Longterm Significance:
Jackson's personal reason for joining the Civil Rights Movement was that his family was denied the right to vote. At the time of his death, only 1 percent of black people were registered to vote in Selma, Alabama. The Voter's Rights Act, which had only an original lifespan of 5 years, outlawed such requirements as literacy tests for voters. It was being vehemently opposed by the national government, specifically Nixon and the Department of Justice under the claim that it discriminated against the South. Three months later, Congress passed the Voter's Rights Act of 1965.
Current Significance:
Jimmie Lee Jackson was murdered by a law enforcement officer during a peaceful march. When we think of George Floyd as white people, we tend to think of him in isolation. This is for several reasons, but largely because we lack historical and personal connections in our memory. Jackson was murdered by James Fowler, an officer of the law. James Fowler walked as a free man until 2010. He was allowed to live his entire life after taking someone else's life. A year after he murdered Jackson, it is believed that Fowler, while on duty as a police officer, murdered another black man, Nathan Johnson. When he was finally convicted, he was sentenced to only 6 months in prison, and served only 5 months.
As we continue to learn and build knowledge that includes more than just the white narratives we first learned, it is important to honor these people individually. We must also spend time to examine their collective impact on history, the differences we now notice in our previous education, and the consequences if we allow these events to continue. When people say George Floyd at a protest, they are saying Jimmie Lee Jackson, they are saying more names than we as white people could ever imagine. The reason that people mobilized so quickly is because they realized they don't

have the luxury of time. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that the white moderate hopes that time will heal all stating, "Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will."
Sources of this post that I invite you to read further-
Fowler's conviction:

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