Timothy Hood

Case summary

Incident

At around 10 p.m. on February 8, 1946, 23-year-old Timothy Hood boarded a streetcar in the Birmingham suburb of Bessemer, Alabama. Several witnesses stated that they heard Hood try unsuccessfully to persuade another Black passenger to move the sign that demarcated the section designated for non-white riders.

Streetcar driver William Ryan Weeks told the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that Hood then moved the sign himself. When Weeks asked Hood to replace the sign, Hood refused, according to Weeks. Weeks said he then told Hood to leave the car, returning Hood’s fare before making his way to the back of the car to open the rear door. Hood allegedly replied, “I’m going out the front door and I’m going to carry you with me.” Weeks said he thought he saw Hood reach for his right pocket, so he pulled out his handgun and hit Hood over the head with it. Weeks and Hood began beating each other, moving through the front door and out onto the street/sidewalk. Outside, Weeks said he fired his gun at Hood five times to “no effect.” Weeks then dropped his gun and hit Hood on the head twice with a steel handle.

Hood fled to the front porch of a woman named Fannie Warren, who later told investigators that Hood’s side was bloody and he told her that he had been shot.

Two passengers from the streetcar ran to the nearby home of Brighton Police Chief Green Berry Fant to alert him. Fant told the FBI that he called the Bessemer police before making his way to the scene. When he arrived, he found Weeks sitting in the train car, his face bloody.

After bystanders alerted him that Weeks’s assailant had fled to a nearby home, Fant, accompanied by Bessemer Police Officer Andrew Eubanks, entered the Warren residence and found Hood sitting in a chair in the living room. They described Hood to the FBI as belligerent and possibly drunk, using profanity against them during the incident. The officers escorted Hood out of the house, placing him in the rear of a police car. They told the FBI they never handcuffed the ex-Marine. Fant also claimed that he did not know that Hood had been shot in his altercation with Weeks. Fant said that he opened the rear of the police vehicle and began interrogating Hood about the fight with Weeks. According to Fant, Hood became hostile and lunged at Fant, prompting the officer to draw his weapon and shoot Hood in the top of his head, killing him.

Israel Hood, Timothy’s father, told the FBI that he rushed to the scene after being told by a neighbor that someone “killed my boy.” Initially directed to move away from the police vehicle, Israel Hood was eventually able to approach his son’s body when it was outside of the police car. Several officers told the FBI that the father described his son as having had a difficult time adjusting to post-war life, but Israel Hood did not recall saying that when asked by the same FBI agent. Israel Hood also told the FBI he saw police officers removing handcuffs from his deceased son’s body.

Aftermath

County Coroner T.J. McCollum concluded that the incident was a justifiable homicide, with Fant acting in self-defense.

The autopsy report noted that Hood sustained three gunshot wounds in his torso and one fatal gunshot entry wound located in the “right upper posterior scalp.” The report also noted that “powder burning of the surface tissue is evidence which would suggest a close range of the weapon when it was fired."

Hood was buried on February 14, 1946 at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in Bessemer, Alabama.

A week after the shooting, Robert E. Jones, veterans secretary of the Southern Negro Youth Conference, wrote the Department of Justice requesting an investigation. On March 22, 1946, meeting at New Zion Baptist Church in Bessemer, 1,200 members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) listened to Hood’s friend Lorenzo Wyatt, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare’s Regional Secretary Malcolm C. Dodd, and Reverend R.T. Thomas speak about Hood’s death; the congregation collectively called for a DOJ investigation. On June 11, 1946, Clifford Reeves, the Hood family attorney, in a letter co-signed by Birmingham NAACP lawyer Arthur Shores, wrote to Turner Smith, chief of the civil rights division at the DOJ, urging the agency to consider Hood’s case for prosecution, citing the autopsy report and witness affidavits as “definitive” in meeting the “Screws test.” Based on a 1945 Supreme Court decision (Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91), this ruling held that law enforcement officers could be liable for federal civil rights prosecutions if someone acting with official authority violated a person’s constitutional rights – and did so knowingly and on purpose.

Responding to this pressure, DOJ and FBI launched an investigation as numerous publications – such as the Birmingham News, the Daily Worker, and the Chicago Defender – continued to highlight the controversy surrounding Timothy Hood’s death. Despite these efforts, federal authorities concluded that the facts did not meet the legal threshold set by the Screws decision – specifically, that there was insufficient evidence of “specific intent” by Fant to deprive Hood of his rights under color of law. The DOJ declined to pursue the matter.

Green Berry Fant and Andrew Eubank died on January 20, 1967 and January 5, 1974, respectively, each in Bessemer, Alabama.

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

“Obituary for Andrew ‘Andy’ Eubank,” Birmingham Post-Herald, Dec. 31, 1973

Find A Grave – “Green Berry Fant”

1930 U.S. Census

1940 U.S. Census

1940-1947 World War II Draft Registration Card

1881-1974 Alabama Death and Burials Index

1798-1958 U.S. Marine Corps Muster Rolls

1925-1963 U.S. Headstone Applications for Military Veterans

“1200 at NAACP Meeting Ask U.S. to Probe Killing of Marine.” Afro-American, March 23, 1946

“Ex-Marine Is Slain, Motorman Injured in Streetcar Row: Finding of Justifiable Homicide Ruled in Shooting of Negro by Police Chief,” Birmingham News, Feb. 9, 1946

“Deplorable and Discouraging,” Birmingham News, February 1946

Letter to the Editor by Dr. J.M. Byas, Birmingham News, Feb. 12, 1946

“Ex-Marine Slain for Moving Jim Crow Sign,” Chicago Defender, Feb. 23, 1946

“Ala. Vet Slain; Shifted Jimcrow Sign,” Daily Worker, February 1946

“Urge FBI Probe of Ex-Marine’s Slaying,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 23, 1946