Alfonzo Merritt

Case summary

Incident

On Aug. 28, 1943, Alfonzo Merritt, a Black man, was sitting in the front room of Inesta Handy’s home in Tuscumbia, Alabama along with several other friends: Simon White, Albert L. Gedd, Louise Johnson, and Minnie M. Johnson. Gedd swore in an affidavit that around 2:30 p.m., four officers came up to the house: Tuscumbia Chief of Police Lee Goodwin, Officer John Patrick, Muscle Shoals Chief of Police John Meadows, and an agent from the Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) Board of Florence, Alabama.

According to Gedd, one of the officers asked Handy, “What have you got there?” and she replied, “nothing.” An officer found some whiskey and asked the group, “Who will claim the whiskey?” and Handy said, “It is in my house so it is mine.” The officers continued to search the home. Two of the officers went to the back of the house. Gedd went through the house and Merritt went around to the back of the house where the officers were “probing in the yard.”

Gedd said that Merritt asked Handy if she had a “pick” so the officers could use it, and Handy said no. One of the officers asked Merritt what Handy said, and he told him. Patrick “ordered Merritt to shut up.” Gedd stated that Handy told Merritt to come inside the house and as Merritt walked toward the house, Patrick “approached him and slapped him and staggered him backward, as he came forward gaining his balance without anything farther Mr. Patrick shot him in the stomach, and while he lay on the ground struck him twice with his gun then kicked him and told him he guess he would shut up now.”

Patrick left the house and told the group he was going to call Bruce Thompson Undertaking Company. Patrick did not allow anyone to pick up or treat Merritt, and Gedd estimated that Merritt lay on the ground for 35 minutes. The undertaker never came. According to Gedd, Merritt told them, “You all tell the truth, for I have done nothing nor said nothing to this man.”

Merritt died at Colbert County Hospital at 9 p.m. the next day.

Aftermath

In November 1943, the county prosecutor made out a warrant for Patrick’s arrest and gave it to his widow Annie Merritt, instructing her to take it to the justice of the peace. The justice of the peace refused to sign it and Merritt could not get it signed by any other authority. She shared the warrant with her attorney, Arthur Shores, on Nov. 15, 1943, writing, “I shall appreciate your giving your best consideration to this matter as it is even impossible for me to have a man arrested for killing my husband.”

On Dec. 8, Shores wrote to Victor Rotnem, chief of the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Civil Rights Section. He shared affidavits from witnesses and implored Rotnem, “since we are not able to get the local authorities to act, we are requesting aid from the Department of Justice.” The affidavits included Gedd’s sworn statement and a sworn statement from Handy affirming Gedd’s telling of the event.

On Dec. 15, Assistant Attorney General Tom Clark wrote Shores and explained that while Patrick was an officer performing an official act at the time that he killed Merritt, the official act was “not being taken against” Merritt but was pertaining to a search of Handy’s home. Clark stated that in cases like this, the defense is that “the assault committed by the officer was a personal act on the part of the officer,” not connected to the official act he was performing. When an “effective argument could be made both ways,” Clark wrote that, “the Criminal Division does not like to proceed in these cases where there is any doubt of the exact violation involved.”

Patrick continued working as a law enforcement officer. He was listed as a state law officer for the Department of Public Safety on the 1950 federal census and was interviewed in a 1954 Birmingham newspaper in his capacity as an ABC agent.

Media Gallery

Case summaries are compiled using government records and archival primary source material. These include, but are not limited to, investigative records, arrest reports, newspaper articles, court filings, census records, birth and death certificates, transcripts, and press releases. In many cases, the records contain contradictory assertions.

In addition to the incident files associated with this case, this summary relied on the following:

Sources

Genealogical Records

• Alabama, United States, Deaths and Burials Index, 1943, 1971, 1963
• Alabama Death Index, State of Alabama Center for Health Statistics, 1943
• Death Certificate for Alabama, United States, Alabama Center for Health Statistics, 1943
• Marriage Records for Colbert County, Alabama, 1928
• Population Schedule for Colbert County, Alabama, 1910
• Population Schedule for Lauderdale County, Alabama, 1950
• Population Schedule for Tuscumbia, Colbert County, Alabama, 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950
• WWII Draft Registration Card, Alabama, United States, 1942

Newspaper Articles

• “Mob Thwarted at Tuscumbia,” Huntsville Times (Huntsville, AL), October 31, 1943
• “Mrs. Elsie Pryor is Accident Victim,” Florence Herald (Florence, AL), June 18, 1943
• Bill Mobley, “Profitable Hard-Luck Story Lands Teller in Jail Here,” Birmingham Post-Herald (Birmingham, AL), October 26, 1954