Willie Pim Lockwood

Case summary

Incident

On May 2, 1946, Willie Pim Lockwood was tending the cotton fields of his Tuskegee homestead. His son, 23-year-old Black World War II veteran Elijah Lockwood, was next door with his neighbor and cousin, Charlie Fields.

Around 1 p.m., John Edward “Ed” Kirby, also a veteran, arrived at the Fields property to pick up some cotton seed. Kirby, who was white, got into an altercation with Elijah Lockwood. When Kirby threw a shovel at him and missed, Lockwood ran inside Fields’ house. Kirby later told Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents he believed Lockwood was “looking for a gun,” so he drove home to get his shotgun. When he returned, the two men exchanged shots. Neither was injured.

According to Fields, Kirby drove away and returned with two Macon County deputy sheriffs: his brother, Willie Freeman Kirby, and Samalo Milton Murphy. Fields told the men Lockwood had returned home.

When the deputies arrived at the Lockwood house, Elijah Lockwood surrendered his pistol and got in their car. The men drove off with Lockwood toward the neighboring house of the Kirby brothers’ father. Mary Lockwood told investigators that she and her husband walked in the same direction “to find out where they were going to take Elijah.”

When the deputies drove away from the Kirby house with Elijah Lockwood, he noticed his parents walking and asked to speak with them. Kirby stopped the car by a bridge near the Fields property.

In all three of her statements – the first coordinated by the Tuskegee branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on May 6, the second to Alabama Department of Public Safety (ADPS) investigators in mid-May, and the third to the FBI on June 17 – Mary Lockwood said Willie Kirby parked the car and got out. When the Lockwoods were close, Willie Lockwood asked his crying son what was the matter.

Willie Kirby told the FBI that he was inside the car. He said when he informed Willie Lockwood that he had a warrant for Elijah’s arrest, Lockwood then moved toward the back seat and told Elijah that “he was not going anywhere.”

Mary Lockwood told officials that her husband asked Kirby where they were planning to take Elijah. Kirby allegedly replied, “I’m going to put him in jail, God damn it, and don’t you say no.”

Kirby and Murphy did not mention this interaction in their oral statement. They said that when Elijah Lockwood tried to leave the car and his father opened the back door to let him out, Willie Kirby exited the car and pulled Willie Lockwood away. Murphy and Kirby alleged Willie Lockwood hit Kirby, prompting Mary Lockwood to run from the scene. After exchanging blows, Kirby said, he knocked Willie Lockwood to the ground. Kirby told the FBI that Lockwood stood up, pulled a knife from his pocket, and “when he appeared to be raising his arm as if to use the knife on him,” he shot Lockwood.

Mary and Elijah Lockwood told FBI agents that Willie Lockwood did not have a gun or knife on him. In her statements, Mary Lockwood said that the altercation began when Willie Kirby said something to her husband she did not understand. When Willie Lockwood replied “Yes,” to Kirby, the deputy sheriff said, “Don’t say yes to me, say yes sir and no sir.” Lockwood responded, “Yes, yes, yes,” and Kirby ordered him to get in the car. He refused, stating he had not done anything wrong.

Both Mary and Elijah said that Kirby then hit Willie Lockwood, who stepped back as Kirby grabbed his right arm. Mary Lockwood begged Kirby not to shoot her husband. Elijah called for his father. When Willie Lockwood shrugged Kirby off his arm, Kirby shot him in the chest. According to Elijah, his father turned and took several steps before falling to the ground.

Aftermath

Willie Kirby stated that he put Willie Lockwood in the car and drove him to a doctor in Tuskegee. He was pronounced dead on arrival.

Mary Lockwood wrote in a letter to the NAACP the next day, “My husband has been killed in cold blooded murder by a deputy sheriff.” She also reported that her son had been arrested without a warrant.

A pathologist at the Tuskegee Institute, where Willie Lockwood had previously been examined as part of the hospital’s syphilis study, performed an autopsy. Lockwood’s primary cause of death was “cardia© tamponade subsequent to a gunshot by a 25 calibre bullet.”

NAACP Special Counsel Thurgood Marshall wrote to Mary Lockwood on May 8, two days after she produced her first sworn affidavit, and promised to “see to it that justice is meted out.” Marshall also alerted the Department of Justice (DOJ)’s Civil Rights Section, forwarding Mary Lockwood’s affidavit.

Lockwood was buried on June 2 at Saint James Cemetery in Tuskegee.

Macon County Solicitor Harry D. Raymon assisted Jesse V. Kitchens, a criminal investigator for the ADPS, in an investigation of Lockwood’s killing. Raymon and Kitchens interviewed Elijah Lockwood from his county jail cell on May 13. When they asked Mary Lockwood for a statement, she agreed and said “she would make the same statement if it was a thousand years from now.” The account Mary Lockwood gave reflected her May 6 affidavit.

On May 21, Theron L. Caudle, assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Criminal Division, requested an FBI investigation and wrote to U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama Edward Burns Parker regarding potential federal prosecution in the case. While it was “impossible to reconcile” the witness statements, Caudle wrote, he believed “that of the Negroes seems more probable under the circumstances, as they appear from the report.”

FBI agents investigated from June 17 through 20. They conducted interviews and requested a copy of the state’s investigative report. Raymon told the agents that he planned to present the case to a Macon County grand jury.

Kirby and Murphy, accompanied by their attorney and the county sheriff, provided oral statements to FBI agents but did not agree to written affidavits.

Caudle continued to solicit Parker’s opinion on the case with multiple unanswered letters. Parker responded on Oct. 14, saying he had not received a copy of the FBI report. Three days later, once “in receipt of the report,” Parker wrote to Caudle that, “after reading and carefully considering the facts set out in this report, I am of the opinion that this matter should be closed.” He did not elaborate.

On Oct. 21, Elijah Lockwood began serving a seven-year sentence for the charge of assault with intent to murder.

Marshall recommended the DOJ refer Willie Lockwood’s case to the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. In its 1947 report, “To Secure These Rights,” the Committee acknowledged the incident, referencing Parker in a section entitled, “Adequacy of cooperation by United States Attorneys.”

In November 1947, Collins Powell Jr. provided an affidavit to the NAACP alleging that law enforcement officers, one of them Willie Kirby, assaulted his son.

Murphy died in 1967, Wille Kirby in 1968, and Ed Kirby in 1970.

Elijah Lockwood died in New York in 1992. He was 69.

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

Archival Sources

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tuskegee Patient Medical Records; Patient 344, W.P. Lockwood; The National Archives at Atlanta, Morrow, Georgia
• NAACP Records: Legal File; Police Brutality, Lockwood, William P., 1946-47; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
• President Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights; “To Secure These Rights,” Committee Report on Constitutional Civil Rights, Segregation, Discrimination, and Remedies, 1947; Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, Independence, Missouri

Genealogical Records

• Alabama Board of Corrections, County Convict Records, Alabama, U.S., 1946
• Alabama, United States, Deaths and Burials Index, 1946, 1948, 1968, 1970
• Death Certificate for Alabama, United States, Alabama Center for Health Statistics, 1946
• Korean War Era Draft Registration Cards, West Virginia, United States, 1948, 1952
• Marriage License Record for Shelby County, Alabama, United States, 1947
• Marriage Records for Macon County, Alabama, United States, 1913
• New Jersey Death Index, New Jersey, United States, 2010
• Population Schedule for Chambers County, Alabama, United States, 1910
• Population Schedule for Lee County, Alabama, United States, 1950
• Population Schedule for Macon County, Alabama, United States, 1920, 1930, 1940
• Population Schedule for Macon County, Alabama, United States, 1950
• Population Schedule for McDowell County, West Virginia, United States, 1950
• Social Security Administration, Social Security Applications and Claims, 1936-2007, Alabama, United States, 1992, 1999, 2004
• Social Security Administration, Social Security Death Index, Master File, Alabama, United States, 1989, 1992
• U.S. Find a Grave Index, 1992
• WWI Draft Registration Card, Alabama, United States, 1918

Newspaper Articles

• “Court Decisions,” The Montgomery Advertiser (Montgomery, Alabama), January 14, 1948
• “Escaped Prisoner Recaptured Here,” The Tuskegee News (Tuskegee, Alabama), July 12, 1951
• “Lynch Victims Since V-J Day,” The Pittsburgh Courier, June 14, 1947
• Obituary for Samalo Milton Murphy, The Montgomery Advertiser (Montgomery, Alabama), July 15, 1967
• Obituary for Willie Freeman Kirby, The Montgomery Advertiser (Montgomery, Alabama), June 4, 1968