George Powell Jr.

Case summary

Incident

George Powell, Jr., a white man incarcerated at the Buford Rock Quarry Prison Camp, testified that in March 1955, a guard known as “Boss Johnson” issued the call of “let’s go” while rounding up men in the prison mess hall. Incarcerated men were expected to answer, “Yes sir, boss.” Powell stated that he responded to Johnson, but the guard pulled him out of the line anyway. As other guards on the catwalk drew their guns and ordered Powell not to move, Johnson began beating him with a blackjack.

Aftermath

Powell’s mother, Lydia Talley, visited her son at the prison on April 24, 1955. In her statement to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) three days later, Talley told agents that Powell had shown her bruises on his head that he said “were the result of a beating by a guard named Johnny Johnson with a blackjack.” Talley added, “My son said he was beaten so hard his shoes came off & that the guard Johnny Johnson told him he was going to kill him & say that he had tried to escape.”

Talley’s sister, Elsie Watkins, also provided a statement to the FBI the same day as Talley’s. Watkins stated that she received a letter in November 1954 from a man named Marvin Dillard, incarcerated at Buford Rock Quarry, who requested a visit. In order to gain entrance to the prison, Watkins claimed she pretended to be Dillard’s aunt. Watkins told the FBI that, during her visit, Dillard told her that a guard named Johnson had beaten Powell with a rubber hose in early November, several months before the mess hall incident. Watkins then sent two lawyers, W. George Thomas and Joe Edwards, to visit the prison. Watkins told the FBI that Thomas and Edwards informed her that they saw Powell in solitary confinement, his head and legs swollen and unable to hold his head up.

The FBI contacted J.B. Hatchett, assistant director of the Georgia State Board of Corrections. Hatchett confirmed that Thomas and Edwards had come to the prison in November 1954, but he said that they would not have been allowed to visit Powell in solitary confinement. Hatchett furnished the FBI with copies of Powell’s file, which detailed repeated disciplinary actions since his initial incarceration in 1947, ranging from escape to “agitating and unsatisfactory work.”

Hatchett also told the FBI that the prison did not employ a guard named Johnny Johnson. The closest match, according to Hatchett, was a guard named Noel Johnson, Jr.

On May 19, 1955, Assistant Attorney General Warren Olney III wrote in a letter to the FBI, “Under the circumstances as reflected in the report, no further investigation is desired,” and closed Powell’s file.

More than a year later, on July 30, 1956, 36 incarcerated men at the Buford Rock Quarry Prison camp launched a protest against prison conditions, using their sledgehammers to intentionally break their left legs above the knee. The next day, five other men followed suit. Powell was among the men who participated in the first day of the self-mutilation protest.

Reporters for the Atlanta Constitution visited the injured men at the State Prison Hospital in early August. One of the people they interviewed was Powell, who had inflicted a compound fracture so severe that the doctor told him he would never walk on his broken leg again. “If they send me back,” Powell told the reporters, “I’ll do a better job next time – I’ll knock the other leg off.”

On August 2, 1956, the Georgia Legislature’s prison committee held a public hearing to investigate the protesters’ allegations. From a wheelchair, Powell testified that after his mother’s visit in April 1955, he was taken to solitary confinement, where Deputy Warden Doyal “Boss” Smith handcuffed and beat him for telling his mother about Johnson. Powell also said that his mother complained to prison officials Hatchett and Jack Forrester, Georgia’s director of prisons. When Hatchett and Forrester came to see him, Powell stated, he told them about the beating he received from Johnson and began naming witnesses, but the officials refused to listen. Hatchett testified that Powell “made no complaints to me,” while Smith admitted slapping some individuals when they “bucked” him, but noted that he never did so without good reason and did not use “great force.”

The same week of the hearing, the Columbus Ledger ran a three-part investigative series entitled, “Hell in the Rock Quarry Prison.” Reporter Ed Sullivan detailed conditions at the prison, including the limited rations of bread, water, molasses and beans that incarcerated men lived on. At Rock Quarry Prison, Sullivan wrote, a guard will “let fly with his hickory stick, a black jack or his fist” if men are talking while working. Some of the men Sullivan interviewed stated that guards shot incarcerated individuals in the hands and feet for infractions like “goofing off” or forgetting to raise their hands when walking toward the gate for a bathroom break.

In an August 5 story, the Atlanta Journal reported that the the prison committee concluded that “the food, sanitary and medical services and living quarters at the Buford Rock Quarry Branch” were “adequate in every particular,” and “the working hours and conditions of the prisoners” were not “inhumane.” The committee did, however, deem the use of “profanity and abusive language” by guards unacceptable, requesting that the State Board of Corrections take “action to effectively stop” practices of verbal abuse and slapping.

In the days that followed, Governor Marvin Griffin tasked Forrester and Hatchett with an investigation of the prison to root out any potential mistreatment of incarcerated people. The Atlanta Journal quoted two unnamed sources – one a current guard, and the other a former guard – about the “brutal acts” they had witnessed at the prison. One of these men recommended reporters speak with an individual that several of the men who protested had named as well: Mickey Dennard. Both the guard and the incarcerated protesters told reporters that Dennard, a Black individual incarcerated at the Rock Quarry Prison, was one of the more recent victims of a brutal beating by a prison guard. Several days later, on August 10, newspapers reported that Forrester recommended the transfer of “Boss” Smith from the prison. Smith admitted his part in the Dennard beating, but claimed he “only slapped him and did not kick him.” Smith added, “I did not even have a stick in my hand or anything. The prisoner was only putting on a scene in front of the other prisoners.”

In 1961 and 1967, Powell received two additional convictions and prison sentences.

The Buford Rock Quarry Prison continued operating in what a 1965 Macon News article described as a “chain gang” capacity until 1962. In 1965, the prison was renamed the “Georgia Training and Development Center.”

Powell died in February 1970 at the age of 45. He was buried at Hillview Cemetery in LaGrange, Georgia.

Media Gallery

Case summaries are compiled from information contained in different sources, including, but not limited to, investigative records, arrest reports, 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

U.S. Census, 1930, 1950

World War II Draft Registration Card, 1943

La Grange, Georgia City Directory, 1946

Atlanta, Georgia City Directory, 1954

Georgia Death Certificate

U.S. Death Index

U.S. Find a Grave Index

State Department of Corrections, Atlanta, Georgia: Felony Convict Record, 1947, 1952

U.S. Central Register of Convicts for Georgia, 1961, 1967

Harold Davis, “Georgia Jail Troubles Few as Riots Flare Elsewhere,” The Atlanta Journal, December 11, 1952

Albert Riley, “Georgia Prisoners Getting Best Care Ever, Warren Says,” The Atlanta Constitution, January 17, 1955

“Solid Rock Isolates Men,” The Atlanta Journal, July 31, 1956

John Pennington, “Would Pop Other Leg, Convicts Say,” The Atlanta Journal, August 1, 1956

“Leg-Smashing Probe Set Thursday at Prison,” The Atlanta Journal, August 1, 1956

“Convicts Claim Brutality,” Augusta Chronicle (Augusta, GA), August 2, 1956

“Prisoners Struck By Guards Asked for It, Mates Say,” The Atlanta Constitution, August 2, 1956

Jim Thomasson, “Two Victims Tell of Mass Injuries,” The Brunswick News (Brunswick, GA), August 3, 1956

“Convicts Repeat Brutality Charge,” The Macon News (Macon, GA), August 3, 1956

Ed Sullivan, “Guards Appear Anxious to Mistreat Prisoners,” The Columbus Ledger (Columbus, GA), August 3, 1956

Nicholas C. Chriss, “Probers Question Crippled Convicts, Self-Injured Incorrigibles Quizzed by Legislators at Prison Hospital,” The Columbus Ledger (Columbus, GA), August 3, 1956

Pat Watters, “Self-Inflicted Leg Hitter Says; Claims Beating,” The Atlanta Journal, August 3, 1956

“Probe OKs Quarry Conduct, Raps Guards for Profanity,” The Columbus Ledger (Columbus, GA), August 3, 1956

“Many Guards Illiterate, Ex-Buford Inmates Say,” The Columbus Ledger (Columbus, GA), August 3, 1956

Pat Watters, “Leg-Break Leaders Sought by Probers,” The Atlanta Journal, August 5, 1956

John Pennington, “Forrester Quizzing Prisoners at Quarry,” The Atlanta Journal, August 7, 1956

John Pennington, “Griffin Orders Shift of Quarry Deputy,” The Atlanta Journal, August 10, 1956

Obituary for George Powell, The Atlanta Constitution, February 9, 1970