Feds Investigate Racial Violence in Marion, Alabama

Feb. 19, 1965 - State and Federal authorities began investigations today into a bloody suppression by Alabama state troopers of a Negro demonstration in the town square of Marion, Ala.

One Negro, Jimmie Lee Jackson (pictured), was shot and critically wounded and at least 10 were injured by nightsticks when 50 troopers attacked a crowd of 400 last night. 

A reporter and two photographers were beaten by white toughs who roamed the street during the melee.

Col. Al Lingo, State Director of Public Safety, who directed the attack, said a trooper had suffered a head injury from a missile hurled from the crowd of Negroes.

Alabama Governor George Wallace, who has been silent on racial matters recently, said: “I regret the incident that happened in Marion. I am conducting a full investigation.”

However, he blamed “career agitators” for the violence and said:

“I don’t want to jump to conclusions of what happened in the still of the night in a small community. I will take proper action.”

In Washington, Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach said the Justice Department was conducting a full investigation.

Both state investigators and FBI agents were on the scene today taking statements from witnesses. 

The riotous disturbance in the usually quiet town of 3,800 broke out about 9:30 p.m. when Negroes attempted to stage a march on the Perry County jail.

The state troopers waded into the Negroes with flailing nightsticks when they did not immediately disperse, as ordered by Police Chief T.O. Harris.

Jimmie Lee Jackson, a 26-year-old laborer, was reported in “very critical condition” in Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma. He was shot in the stomach in a café where a crowd of Negroes had taken refuge from the troopers.

Other Negroes in the café said today that Jackson had fought the troopers when one of them clubbed his mother, Mrs. Viola Jackson. The Negroes said a trooper had then taken out his pistol and shot Jackson. His mother was hospitalized with a head wound.

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