Tom Patterson Jr.

Case summary

Incident

Shortly after 2 a.m. on July 4, 1951, Tom Patterson Jr. and his common-law wife Marie Davis Patterson were walking home from the Swank Club, located at the intersection of 8th Avenue and 24th Street North in Birmingham. They were arguing, and though Marie Patterson later told investigators they had not been drinking, witnesses at the Swank Club said they had been. At a corner near a gas station that was closed for the night, Marie Patterson later told the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), “Tom slapped me down and pulled out a switch blade knife and opened it. I had a package in my hand and hit at him with the package. We were arguing all the time but I did not call for help.”

Robert Harris, who lived nearby, told the FBI that he was sitting on his porch with his cousin, John Sturdivant, when they heard a woman screaming. They ran toward the noise and discovered Tom Patterson “pulling” Marie Patterson by the waist and “hitting” her on the head and face as she screamed. Harris and Sturdivant observed a car pull up. A man got out and pointed a gun at Tom Patterson and ordered him to drop the knife.

The man was white Birmingham police officer Ralph Franklin Watson, who was off-duty and, according to Chief of Police Marcus Hancock, on his way to go fishing with his wife, Sylvia, and another couple, Thomas and Inez Springfield.

In his statement to Birmingham police, Watson said that he pulled into the gas station when he saw Tom Patterson “dragging” Marie Patterson while she “was begging and pleading with him to turn her loose.” When he got out of the car, Watson said, he heard Marie Patterson pleading with Tom Patterson to drop his knife and let her go. At that point, Watson stated, Tom Patterson hit Marie, knocking her to the ground. Watson said he showed the couple his badge and identified himself as a police officer. Watson told investigators that he demanded Patterson “leave the negro girl alone and drop his knife.”

According to the statements Ralph Watson, Sylvia Watson, and Inez Springfield gave police, Tom Patterson called Watson a “white son-of-a-bitch” after Watson showed him his police badge. Ralph Watson and Springfield both stated that Patterson threatened to kill Watson. When Watson ordered Patterson again to drop the knife, they said, Patterson swung at the officer. At that point, Watson stated, “I hit [Patterson] alongside the head with my pistol and the gun discharged and the negro fell.”

Another witness, 18-year-old Virgil Melvin, corroborated Watson’s account, saying he saw Patterson attempt to hit Watson, at which point Watson struck Patterson with his gun, which discharged at the same time.

Other witnesses, including Marie Patterson, had different accounts. In their interviews with the FBI, both Sturdivant and Harris stated that they saw Tom Patterson drop the knife before Watson hit him with his gun. Sturdivant and Harris told the FBI that the gun went off at the same time Watson hit Patterson in the head. Two other witnesses, James Arthur Jr. and Ralph B. Frazier, who were sitting about 20 feet away in a truck, said the gun went off when Watson pistol-whipped Patterson the second time.

In her interview that same night with Birmingham police, Marie Patterson acknowledged that her husband had pushed her to the ground, and that he had a knife. On July 6, however, she gave a different account to the Birmingham chapter of the NAACP, alleging that the police had prematurely cut her off during the interview and slapped her when she refused to say her husband had threatened police with a knife.

In her NAACP interview and August 31 statement to the FBI, Marie Patterson said that her husband apologized to Watson and dropped his knife after the officer showed him his badge. Patterson claimed that Watson said something like, “You seem to be a smart ass negro, I ought to kill you,” at which point she jumped between the two men and begged the officer not to shoot her husband. Watson then struck Tom Patterson “with the butt of his pistol,” she said. As her husband “staggered back” with his hands up, Marie Patterson said, Watson shot him once. In her July 6 NAACP interview, Patterson stated that when she knelt on the ground beside her husband, Watson kicked her and said, “That N—r needs to be dead.”

Aftermath

Police officers told the media that Tom Patterson arrived at Jackson Hillman Hospital at 3:10 a.m. and died at 8:57 a.m. However, in her statement to the NAACP, Marie Davis Patterson said that her husband died five minutes after he arrived at the hospital.

Marie Patterson was treated at the hospital for “minor contusions of the left cheek” that she said were the result of a fall she sustained when her husband was shot. After an x-ray revealed that Patterson did not have any broken bones, she was discharged.

An autopsy performed later that morning by Dr. R.N. Stokes concluded that Tom Patterson Jr. died of a gunshot wound from a bullet that entered over his left eye and exited through the top of his head.

On Patterson’s death certificate, Dr. Donald B. Sweeney recorded cause of death as, “Aspiration of stomach contents” due to “GSW [gunshot wound] left cerebrum.” Two days later, on July 6, Coroner Joe Hilderbrand ruled Patterson’s killing an “accidental death.”

Patterson’s funeral was held at the 45th Street Baptist Church on July 11. Reporters from The Atlanta Daily World and the Alabama Citizen reported that funeral services were delayed because the hospital initially withheld Patterson’s death certificate from his family. Patterson was buried at Mason Cemetery in Birmingham.

Eight days after the shooting, Thurgood Marshall, NAACP Special Counsel, wrote to Assistant U.S. Attorney General James M. McInerney that “in view of the fact that this is the fifth killing of Negroes in Birmingham within recent months, we are requesting that the Department of Justice institute an investigation.”

On August 23, 1951, the Office of the Attorney General recommended the “matter” of Patterson’s killing “be closed without further investigation and without prosecutive action.” In his letter to McInerney, L. Drew Redden, assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, wrote, “It is obvious that almost every witness to this incident would agree that the subject did not aim his pistol at the victim and shoot him, but that the pistol was discharged at the time subject struck the victim, either the first or second time.”

In December 1951, on behalf of Ethel Mae Lewis, Patterson’s mother, attorney Harry B. Cohen asked the DOJ if Patterson’s case was going to be criminally prosecuted and if he could use the results of the federal investigation in a civil suit. McInerney replied that “the Department’s investigation did not sufficiently indicate a violation of Federal criminal statutes to warrant prosecution,” and thus the case was closed. Further, McInerney wrote, the results of the investigation were “confidential.”

Officer Ralph F. Watson continued to work as a Birmingham police officer until June 1955, when he was arrested and lost his badge for his participation in a bootlegging scheme. He ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison. At the time of his arrest, journalists at the Birmingham Post-Herald reported that Watson had been suspended on three separate occasions since joining the department in 1946–twice for “conduct unbecoming an officer” and once for abandoning his beat. None of these suspensions were related to Patterson’s killing.

Watson died in 1976 at 56. His obituary identified him as “retired” from Birmingham’s police department.

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

National Cemetery Internment Form, 1933

US Deaths and Burials Index, 1933

World War II Draft Registration Card,

World War II Army Enlistment Record,

U.S. Federal Census, 1930, 1940, and 1950

Jefferson County Marriage License Record, 1947

State of Alabama Death Certificate, 1951

“Funeral Rites for Victim of Birmingham Policeman,” Atlanta Daily World, July 14, 1951

“Vet Institutes Will Open Soon,” The Birmingham Post, February 4, 1946

“Victiming of Negroes Persists in Birmingham,” Alabama Citizen (Tuscaloosa, AL), July 14, 1951

Untitled, The Huntsville Times (Huntsville, AL), July 6, 1951

“Two Police Face Whisky Charges,” Birmingham Post-Herald, June 16, 1955

“Two Former Policemen Face Sentencing Today,” Birmingham Post-Herald, January 5, 1956

“Former Officers at Birmingham Get Sentences,” The Opelika-Auburn News (Opelika, AL)

Obituary for Ralph Franklin Watson, Birmingham Post-Herald, November 2, 1976

Obituary for Willie Patterson, Birmingham Post-Herald, June 30, 2000