James Bonard Fowler

James Bonard Fowler (September 10, 1933 – July 5, 2015) was a convicted drug trafficker and an Alabama state trooper, known for fatally shooting civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson on February 18, 1965, during a peaceful march by protesters seeking voting rights.

Fowler was among police and state troopers who attacked unarmed marchers that night in Marion, Alabama.

A grand jury declined to indict him that year.

Fowler was born in 1933 to a farming family in Geneva County, Alabama.

He attended local schools, which were racially segregated, as were other public facilities at the time.

He played football in high school.

After graduating, he served for a period in the US Navy from 1951 to 1953 during the Korean War as a Petty officer third class, and then attended the University of Alabama in the late 1950s.

He married a local woman but later they were divorced.

The mid-1960s had become increasingly a time of tension in Jim Crow Alabama.

Leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and other civil rights groups had come to nearby Selma, Alabama, where they were conducting protests and marches about voting rights.

After completing training, Fowler entered the Alabama State Police in 1961.

That year Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed.

After the shooting, Fowler was reassigned to Birmingham.

By February 1965, he was a corporal.

He and other state troopers were increasingly charged with managing or suppressing civil rights actions conducted by African-American groups seeking to regain their constitutional rights in the state and others of the South.

On the night of February 18, 1965, around 500 people left Zion United Methodist Church in Marion, intending to walk to the City Jail about a half a block away, where a young civil rights worker was being held.

The march was to protest his arrest, and the unarmed marchers were singing hymns.

They were met by a crowd of Marion City police officers, county sheriff's deputies, and Alabama State Troopers.

In the standoff, streetlights were abruptly turned off (some sources say that they were shot out by the police), and the police began to beat the protestors.

Two United Press International photographers were beaten by the police and their cameras were smashed.

Jimmie Lee Jackson, his mother, Viola Jackson, and his 82-year-old grandfather, Cager Lee, and some others ran into Mack's Café by the church, pursued by about ten Alabama state troopers.

Police clubbed Cager Lee to the floor and his daughter Viola rushed to his aid.

The 26-year-old Jackson went to help his mother and was shot twice in the abdomen by Fowler (who was not then identified).

Jackson died eight days later in the hospital on February 26, 1965.

A grand jury declined to indict Fowler in September 1965, and his name was not publicized.

Jackson's death is considered the primary catalyst for the first Selma to Montgomery march that occurred a few days later on "Bloody Sunday", March 7, 1965.

The violence unleashed there increased widespread public support for the movement to gain enforcement of voting rights, and later that year the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed.

After the shooting, Fowler returned to his duties as a State Trooper.

In 1968 he was dismissed from the state troopers after physically attacking his supervisor.

He enlisted in the US Army, serving with valor in Vietnam.

He was awarded two Silver Stars and a Purple Heart.

After the war, he became a heroin trafficker in northern Thailand, returning to the US for brief visits.

During his time in Thailand, he was convicted of heroin trafficking and served five years in a Thai prison.

After returning to the US permanently in 1996, Fowler farmed with his wife in rural Geneva County, Alabama.

It was not until 2005 that Fowler acknowledged shooting Jackson, a young deacon in the Baptist church, claiming to have acted in self defense.

In response to Jackson's death, several days later civil rights leaders initiated the Selma to Montgomery marches as part of their campaign for voting rights.

In 2005 Fowler admitted the shooting of Jackson in an interview with a local newspaper, saying that he had acted in self defense.

In 2007 he was indicted by the district attorney in Perry County for Jackson's death, and in 2010 he pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

He was sentenced to six months in prison but was released one month early for a surgical procedure.

Beginning in 2007, Fowler was also being investigated by the FBI for the 1966 shooting death of Nathan Johnson, a black man fatally shot after being taken to the Alabaster jail.