Ex-trooper pleads guilty in 1965 Ala. slaying that prompted key civil rights marches

[pinboy3niner]

Ex-trooper pleads guilty in 1965 Ala. slaying that prompted key civil rights marches


FILE - This Aug. 17, 2010 file photo shows former Alabama State Trooper James Bonard Fowler as he sits in the Perry County Courthouse prior to a hearing in Marion, Ala. Fowler pleaded guilty Monday, Nov. 15, 2010 to a lesser charge in the 1965 shooting death of a black man at a civil rights protest, a killing that inspired historic voting rights marches. Fowler, 77, entered the plea of misdemeanor second-degree manslaughter two weeks before he was scheduled to go to trial on a murder charge for the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson. (AP Photo/Dave Martin, File) (Dave Martin, AP / August 17, 2010)


PHILLIP RAWLS
Associated Press
November 15, 2010|12:45 p.m.

MARION, Ala. (AP) — A former state trooper took a plea deal Monday in the 1965 slaying of a black man that prompted the "Bloody Sunday" march at Selma and helped galvanize America's civil rights movement.

Indicted for murder more than four decades after the fatal shooting, James Bonard Fowler, 77, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of second-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to six months in jail.

It was a mixed victory for civil rights era prosecutions. The prosecutor and Jackson family members did not get the murder conviction they sought, but the jail time and an apology from Fowler seemed to help close a painful chapter in U.S. history.
<snip>

In the Bloody Sunday protest set off by Jackson's shooting, troopers and deputies attacked marchers after they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River. The violence brought new waves of recruits and support to the movement. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who preached at Jackson's funeral, later led the Selma-to-Montgomery march that prompted passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Read more:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-civil-rights-slaying,0,1154802.story

[rasputin1952]

1. The rule of Unintended Consequences....

This bum shot and killed a man, possibly, (or most likely), because of skin color.

This in turn brings outrage and draws in thousands to a cause worth fighting and sometimes dying for. The last thing on this man's mind was just how people all over the nation would see his act as one that would spur us on fight for Equal Rights for everyone...a fight still worth fighting and if need be, dying for.

I wonder if he ever had his, "oh shit", moment?

6 months, pathetic.

[ngant17]

3. those who work forces are the same who burn crosses

sounds like he was in a lot of similar company back then.

[midnight]

2. What took so long?

[blueamy66]

4. The USA took so long

sad