Seventy-seven-year-old James Bonard Fowler pled guilty to one count of second-degree manslaughter two weeks before he was set to go to trial. He had been charged with two counts of murder in the 1965 shooting of 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson during a melee in a restaurant in Marion, Alabama. Fowler was sentenced to six months in prison and six months of unsupervised probation.
Jimmie Lee Jackson was a cornerstone in the civil rights movement. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached at his funeral. His death set off the first Selma-to-Montgomery march that became known as “Bloody Sunday,” when Alabama police attacked demonstrators crossing a bridge, an event many say helped lead to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Six months for taking a life?