Della McDuffie

Case summary

Incident

On the evening of Saturday, April 25, 1953, Della’s Place, a local Black-owned and operated cafe on U.S. Highway 5, was lively. As the jukebox played, Della McDuffie sat in her usual spot, in a rocking chair by the heater, toward the back of the cafe. Just after midnight, Hattie Hudson, who was working the counter, realized they needed to close. Wilcox County Sheriff Perry Columbus “Lummie” Jenkins, who was white, had previously told the McDuffies to close their cafe by midnight on Saturdays.

Several witnesses stated that they heard someone in the cafe yell, “Gangway!” as patrons began fleeing Della’s Place in all directions. Witnesses saw Jenkins enter the cafe, swinging a long rubber hose as he walked through. Multiple witnesses described the sheriff striking several people with the hose as they tried to rush out of the cafe, including a teenaged boy named Billy James Woods, who was hit in the head. Some witnesses said they saw Jenkins holding a gun in one hand and the hose in the other. They reported hearing gunshots as they ran from the cafe.

Jenkins corroborated some of these claims in his July 9, 1953 interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), affirming that he went to Della’s Place to enforce the midnight closure. Jenkins said that when he arrived, he saw a fight about to break out between two men, so he walked over and “slapped at them” with his right hand. “I did not,” Jenkins alleged, “use a 12 or 14 [inch] rubber hose that I had in my left hand.” Chaos heightened inside the crowded cafe when Highway Patrol Officer Don C. Kimbro entered the front door. Jenkins said he drew his gun and fired into the floor.

The subsequent FBI investigation confirmed the discovery of one hole in the floor, “possibly made by a bullet” located “toward the rear of the building, and within a few feet of the spot where Victim, Della McDuffie, was reported sitting.” Della McDuffie had a pre-existing medical condition that kept her from fleeing with the rest of the patrons. In his interview with the FBI, Jenkins stated, “I never did go back into the rear of the cafe where it is said that Della was sitting.”

Will McDuffie, whose nickname was “Snowball,” told the FBI that he saw Jenkins “striking at one person, then another, with the hose-like weapon and demanding that they go home.” The officers, according to McDuffie, fired several shots at people, the floor, and the ceiling. When the officers left, McDuffie turned off the jukebox and lifted his wife from her chair. While Will McDuffie carried his wife to their living quarters attached to the cafe, he recalled to investigators, Della said, “Snow, they hit me.” He replied, “Sure[ly] Mr. Lummie didn’t hit you.” Della McDuffie responded that Jenkins struck her after she did not get up from her chair.

Several witnesses gave statements that, once McDuffie was in bed, she was mumbling, saying, “Lord help me,” and complaining that her head hurt. Will McDuffie stated he saw “a knot” in his wife’s swollen and limp left arm. He also noticed a “dark place” above McDuffie’s right ear that he said “looked like she had been hit there.” Will McDuffie sent Oscar Hudson to get Dr. Robert E. Dickson, a white physician who lived about a block away.

Dickson arrived between midnight and one o’clock in the morning. Jimmie McDuffie, the McDuffies’ only child, arrived shortly after. In his interview with the FBI, Dickson stated that McDuffie was “gasping for breath, she couldn’t talk, she had virtually no pulse and she was cold and clammy.” Three witnesses later told investigators that upon examining Della McDuffie, Dickson asked “How come you didn’t tell me she was hit?”

McDuffie died just after 1 a.m. In his interview with the FBI, Dickson said that he did not see any cuts, bruising, or bleeding following an examination of McDuffie’s head. “I can definitely state that the cause of death was not brought on by any injury to the head, such as a blow,” he told investigators. On McDuffie’s death certificate, Dickson listed the cause of death as a “Cerebral Hemorrhage” with an “antecedent cause of five-year-long arteriosclerosis.”

Will McDuffie told the FBI that he had informed Dickson of blood coming out of his wife’s right ear. Dickson stated his response was, “I told him that if he wanted to he could call the coroner.”

Aftermath

On Monday, April 27, 1953, Jimmie McDuffie, Will and Della McDuffie’s 42-year-old son, went to the Lewis Brothers Funeral Home in Selma with two of Della’s brothers, Cebron and Lonnie Varner. All three men stated that after initially refusing their requests, the mortician, E. L. Lewis, allowed them to view Della McDuffie’s body. Jimmie McDuffie and his uncles all stated that they saw a “large knot or bruise” on Della McDuffie’s left arm, which appeared broken. They also observed a “dark bruised spot” on McDuffie’s right temple. Lewis told the FBI he had thoroughly investigated the body prior to injecting embalming fluid, and did not see any cuts, bruises, or broken bones. Lewis did note that one of McDuffie’s arms was “withered” from what he believed was an earlier medical condition and had become slightly discolored after embalming. He stated, “this is normal where any part of the body is diseased.” No autopsy was performed.

Will and Jimmie McDuffie met with regional representatives of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) at least twice. On June 10, Thurgood Marshall, special counsel at NAACP headquarters, wrote to Warren Olney III, Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), to request an investigation. The FBI launched an investigation into McDuffie’s death several weeks later, interviewing 21 witnesses by July 13, 1953.

After reviewing the FBI’s report, Percy Fountain, U.S. Attorney for Alabama, determined there was insufficient evidence to prosecute, remarking that “the doctor and undertaker, supposedly impartial witnesses, found no physician signs that Victim McDuffie was struck by anyone.” The FBI added in an August 26 report that McDuffie’s history of hypertension “may have been responsible for her death.”

In a September 25 letter to Marshall, Olney wrote that the DOJ would be “unable to take any action” on McDuffie’s case, as the “investigation does not indicate that Mrs. McDuffie met her death as a result of being struck or mistreated by any law enforcement officer.” The DOJ officially closed McDuffie’s file on September 28, 1953.

Will McDuffie died about one year after Della McDuffie. In the 2013 documentary The Trouble I’ve Seen, Wilbur McDuffie said that on May 11, 1954, he and his brother, James McDuffie, Jr., discovered their grandfather’s body laying in the doorway of his home. Wilbur McDuffie stated that the body was soaking wet. Dickson, the same doctor who attended to Della McDuffie a year earlier, completed Will McDuffie’s death certificate. The cause of death that Dickson listed, just as he had for Della McDuffie, was “cerebral hemorrhage.”

The McDuffies were buried, side by side, at Glovers Cemetery in Marengo County.

In 1965, Jenkins refused to allow John Lewis to lead a demonstration over a voter registration drive in Wilcox County. In 1967, Jenkins was again questioned by the FBI in his capacity as sheriff, when 24-year-old Bodell Williams was found dead in a river, “hung up,” according to the Chicago Defender, by a fishing line in Wilcox County. Jenkins said there was no sign of foul play and suggested that perhaps Williams had been swimming in the river, or maybe he had fallen in.

Jenkins served as Wilcox County sheriff for 32 years. He died in December 1978. He was 77.

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. Federal Census, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940, and 1950

Marengo County Marriage Record, 1909

World War II Draft Registration Card, 1940

World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1942

Jefferson County Marriage Record, 1947

U.S. Death Index for Alabama, 1954

U.S. Death and Burials Index for Alabama, 1954

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1980

Alabama Death Certificate, 1953, 1954 (via CRRJ)

Records of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, General Office File, 1953 (via CRRJ)

Records of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal File, Crime, Alabama, 1953-1955

Obituary for William McDuffie, Johnson City Press (Johnson, TN), January 4, 1993

Obituary for Fannie Rand McDuffie, Birmingham Post-Herald (Birmingham, AL), January 26, 1998

“Fear Foul Play in Death of Woman,” Atlanta Daily World, May 5, 1953

“FBI Probes Killing, Beating by Police,” Baltimore Afro-American, July 25, 1953

“Probe Death of Paralized[sic] Woman,” The Michigan Chronicle (Detroit, MI), July 25, 1953

“When Johnstown was a Sundown Town,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh, PA), September 3, 2023

Obituary for Percy Columbus (Lummie) Jenkins, The Selma Times-Journal (Selma, AL), December 7, 1978

“White Ministers Beaten, Run Out of Alabama County,” Atlanta Daily World, May 16, 1964

“60 Negroes Alter Camden’s History,” The Chicago Defender, March 4, 1965

“Alabama Sheriff Opposed by Negro,” The New York Times, February 20, 1966

“Alabama Death is ‘Accident,’” The Chicago Defender, May 25, 1967

Ben Windham, “Southern Lights: Lummie Jenkins Was Legend in Law Enforcement,” The Tuscaloosa News (Tuscaloosa, AL), January 1, 2016

The Trouble I’ve Seen (2013) documentary