Lorenzo Best
Lorenzo Best was a 35-year-old former U.S. Army private from Calhoun County, Alabama. Best was one of seven children of Elbert and Willie Best, and worked at the Anniston Soil Pipe Company.
Case summary
The federal records for this case, viewable on the Civil Rights Cold Cases Records portal, are limited. The following summary was compiled primarily from other sources, including those listed at the bottom.
Incident
Accounts of what happened on the early morning of June 14, 1950 are confined to what police officers told newspaper reporters. According to an article in the local paper, The Anniston Star, police responded to a call from a home at 1215 Crawford Avenue around 3 a.m. This was the Anniston residence of Willie and Ruth Morris, who lived there along with their children and the family of Willie’s sister, Flora Dye. According to The Anniston Star, Esther Best, a sister of Willie Morris and Flora Dye, was also residing in the home after becoming estranged from her husband Lorenzo.
Officers O. J. Bushard, Jerry B. Henson, and Sergeant John Dewey Thomas arrived at the scene to find Lorenzo Best allegedly fighting with his wife, Esther, and unnamed others.
The police told reporters that they attempted to arrest Best, who resisted and began fighting with the three officers both inside and outside of the home. Best allegedly knocked Thomas to the ground at some point. As the police were about to handcuff Best, The Anniston Star reported, he broke free. The officers stated that Best grabbed a knife from his pocket and started to advance on the officers. In response, Thomas shot Best four times in the chest.
The next day, the Birmingham Post-Herald reported that Aaron “Sacco” Pate, who was serving as both Calhoun County sheriff and acting coroner, determined that the killing was a justifiable homicide. Best’s death certificate explained his cause of death as the result of having been shot with a “pistol 4 Times in chest” by a “policeman in [the] line of duty.”
Aftermath
The killing of Lorenzo Best was one of a series of homicides involving Black individuals at the hands of Alabama law enforcement at the turn of the decade. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) identified 13 such killings in 1950 alone, estimating that from 1948 to mid-1951, police officers in Alabama had been responsible for the deaths of at least 52 Black individuals.
Aaron A. Pate served as Calhoun County sheriff until 1955. Sergeant John Dewey Thomas was still an Anniston police officer at the time of his death in 1957. Pate died in 1980.
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
World War II Draft Registration Card, 1940
World War II Army Enlistment Record, 1941
U.S. Federal Census, 1930 and 1940
Talladega County Marriage License Record, 1915
Calhoun County Marriage License Record, 1944
State of Alabama Death Certificate, 1936, 1950
Anniston City Directory, 1945, 1948
Obituary for Mildred L. Orr, Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), February 19, 1997
“Policeman Kills Local Negro During Wild Melee in House,” The Anniston Star (Anniston, AL), June 14, 1950
“Anniston Policeman Exonerated in Killing,” Birmingham Post-Herald, June 15, 1950
“‘Rule Cops’ Best Killing Justifiable,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 24, 1950
“Former Calhoun Sheriff; ‘Socco’ Pate, Dead,” The Anniston Star (Anniston, AL), October 8, 1980
Death Notice for John Dewey Thomas, Birmingham Post-Herald, February 12, 1957