Tuscaloosa to have first black police chief
August 6, 2008
Staff Writer, BlackPoliticsontheWeb.com
- Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox has named Captain Steve Anderson to become the city’s first black police chief. Anderson currently heads the department’s internal affairs division and has been with the department since 1994. He replaces Police Chief Ken Swindle, who retires September 30th.
Black voter registration climbing in Alabama, due largely to Obama’s presidential bid, experts say
July 31, 2008
LISA OSBURN, The Birmingham News
- Black voter registration is climbing in Alabama, a trend political science experts attribute to excitement surrounding Barack Obama’s presidential bid.
Since the last presidential election, the percentage of active registered voters who are black has risen from 24 percent to 25 percent. That is nearing the proportion of Alabama’s black population, slightly more than 26 percent according to the U.S. Census.
As of June 30, 641,815 black voters had active registration. That number is up by about 14,500 from 2004 and expected to increase even more by November, according to secretary of state data.
Birmingham airport named after civil rights activist Shuttlesworth
July 16, 2008
Associated Press
- The Birmingham Airport Authority has voted to change the name of the Birmingham International Airport to the Birmingham Shuttlesworth International Airport.
The name change was approved early Wednesday.
Mayor Larry Langford had been pushing to rename the airport in honor of prominent civil rights activist, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. Langford said its an “appropriate honor” for Shuttlesworth.
The mayor also said he would like to continue to work with the authority to try to make the airport into a true “international” airport with flights to and from other countries.
Former Ala. trooper to face trial in 1965 shooting
July 10, 2008
PHILLIP RAWLS, Associated Press
- A former Alabama state trooper is scheduled to go on trial in October for a slaying that occurred on darkened streets during a historic civil rights demonstration in Marion in 1965.
Circuit Judge Tommy Jones declined to dismiss an indictment against former trooper James Bonard Fowler and scheduled his trial for the week of Oct. 20.
“We look forward to having this matter resolved after 43 years,” District Attorney Michael Jackson said Thursday.
A Perry County grand jury indicted Fowler on May 9, 2007, on first-degree and second-degree murder charges involving the shooting death of Jimmie Lee Jackson. Fowler’s attorney, George Beck, had asked the judge to dismiss the charges because of the passage of time and the death of defense witnesses, but the judge declined.
Jackson, a 26-year-old black man, was shot by the white trooper during a civil rights protest in the west Alabama town on Feb. 18, 1965. Jackson died eight days later at a Selma hospital.
The shooting happened after street lights went out during a nighttime civil rights march and violence erupted. Civil rights museums in Alabama say Jackson was shot trying to stop state troopers from beating his grandfather and mother. Fowler maintains he shot in self-defense after Jackson hit him with a drink bottle and tried to grab his gun.
Fowler’s defense wants the trial moved from west Alabama because signs and historic markers in Perry County portray Jackson as a martyr of the civil rights movement. Beck argued that the shooting was self-defense and that his 74-year-old client couldn’t get a fair trial in the county where it occurred. The judge declined to rule on moving the trial until jurors are questioned in October, and the district attorney said court officials will call a larger-than-normal pool of potential jurors.
“Mr. Fowler continues to believe he cannot get a fair trial in Perry County. He feels what he did was justified under the circumstances, and he feels if he can get an fair and impartial jury, he will be acquitted,” Beck said Thursday.
Jackson’s shooting prompted civil rights activists to set out on a Selma-to-Montgomery march, which was turned back at Selma by club-wielding troopers and deputies in what became known as “Bloody Sunday.” A later march, led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., made it all the way to the Alabama Capitol and led Congress to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which allowed millions of Southern blacks to register to vote.
A federal grand jury in Mobile reviewed the shooting shortly after it occurred and brought no charges. Michael Jackson reopened the investigation after he became Perry County’s first black district attorney in 2005.
Officials Investigate 3 Alabama Counties in Voter Fraud Accusations
July 10, 2008
ADAM NOSSITER, New York Times
- Federal and state authorities are looking into accusations of voting fraud in three largely black counties of Alabama, including Perry and Lowndes Counties, which played a historic role in the struggle for black voting rights in the 1960s.
In May, a local citizens group gathered affidavits detailing several cases in which at least one Democratic county official paid citizens for their votes, or encouraged them to vote multiple times. The affidavits were presented to state officials in Montgomery, the capital, and after the June 3 primary, the Alabama attorney general, Troy King, a Republican, seized voting records from the primary election in Bullock, Lowndes and Perry Counties.
The United States Department of Justice posted a team of observers to monitor the primary, and the Alabama secretary of state, Beth Chapman, a Republican, reported hearing from one of the federal observers that a candidate had “free rein” of a polling place, where campaigning is prohibited, passing out sample ballots and instructing voters how to vote.
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