Jessie James Shelby

Case summary

Incident

Jessie James Shelby, a Black laborer who lived in Yazoo City, Mississippi, spent Friday night of Jan. 20, 1956 at the Silver Slipper Lounge. Around 9:15 p.m., two white police officers, Jolly C. Thompson and Edward Marlon Manor, responded to a call that a fight had broken out at the club. The Yazoo City Herald reported that when Thompson and Manor arrived, they encountered “a negro girl” named Ruby Lee Little who alleged that “Shelby had beaten her.”

Newspapers reported that Thompson and Manor located Shelby outside the club, where they arrested him and searched him for weapons. According to the officers, Shelby grabbed Thompson’s nightstick and began beating him with it. Thompson, later stating he acted in self-defense, shot Shelby in the stomach.

The officers put Shelby in their car and drove him to Afro-American Sons and Daughters Hospital. He died at the hospital at 8:15 the next morning.

Aftermath

Shelby’s death certificate indicated cause of death as a hemorrhage from a gunshot wound inflicted while “Resisting arrest.”

Shelby was buried at Pleasant Grove Cemetery in Bentonia, Mississippi.

Newspapers reported that on Jan. 24, 1956, a coroner’s jury determined that Thompson shot Shelby in “lawful self-defense,” and deemed the killing a “justifiable homicide.” County Attorney Griffin Norquist told the press that the justice of the peace and acting coroner called “four or five witnesses” during the inquest, stating that none “disputed the account of the shooting as told by Officer J.C. Thompson.” Four months later, Thompson resigned from the Yazoo City Police Department.

Mississippi NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers drafted a partial report of Shelby’s killing on Jan. 31. In the report, Evers noted that he had attempted to speak to eyewitnesses in order to “secure firsthand information,” but reported, “I ran upon the usual ‘afraid to talk’ because of possible reprisals.” Evers pledged that he would continue to pursue more information about Shelby’s death.

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent a Daily Worker article about Shelby’s death to Assistant Attorney General Warren Olney III on Feb. 1. He followed up with a Jackson Daily News article on Feb. 13.

Thompson died in Renton, Washington in 1983. He was 62. Manor was 80 when he died in 1992 in Yazoo City.

In 2007, the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigated Shelby’s killing as part of the Civil Rights Cold Case Initiative. Over the course of several years, FBI agents attempted to obtain information from the Yazoo Sheriff’s Office and Police Department, the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office, the Mississippi NAACP, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, but were unable to secure any records relating to Shelby’s killing. The FBI also issued a press release that appeared in print and on television in an effort to generate tips from the public.

In 2009, an FBI agent located a 1956 Yazoo Herald newspaper article about Shelby’s killing, helping to identify the police officers responsible for his death. The FBI subsequently obtained death certificates for Thompson, Manor, and Shelby.

In May 2010, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division delivered a letter to one of Shelby’s family members informing them that because both Thompson and Manor were deceased, the FBI and DOJ were unable to pursue the case any further. In the letter, the DOJ wrote, “we have concluded that the now deceased Officers Thompson and Manor were solely responsible for [Shelby’s] death and, therefore, we have no choice but to close our investigation.”

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:

Genealogical Records

• Population Schedule for Yazoo County, Mississippi, United States Federal Census, 1940, 1950
• Statewide Index to Mississippi Death Records, 1942-1943; Mississippi State Department of Health; Jackson, Mississippi, United States

Newspaper Articles

• “In Mississippi,” The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN), January 29, 1956
• “Jury Rules Fatal Shooting Justified,” Sun Herald (Biloxi, MS), January 25, 1956
• “Legals,” Yazoo Herald (Yazoo City, MS), July 19, 1956
• “Negro Fatally Shot Resisting Arrest at Night Spot,” The Yazoo Herald (Yazoo City, MS), January 26, 1956
• “Officer Cleared in Yazoo Death,” Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, MS), January 27, 1956
• “Officers Slay Negro: Resisted Them, Claim,” The Memphis Press-Scimitar (Memphis, TN), January 23, 1956
• “Self Defense is Ruled in Yazoo City Shooting,” The Vicksburg Post (Vicksburg, MS), January 25, 1956
• “Yazoo City, Miss. Policeman Cleared in Death of Negro,” The Black Dispatch (Oklahoma City, OK), February 2, 1956
• “Yazoo Officer Cleared,” Enterprise-Journal (McComb, MS), January 25, 1956
• “Yazoo Officer Shoots Negro: Victim Slain Resisting Arrest,” Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, MS), January 22, 1956
• Jerry Mitchell, “Victims’ Kin in Civil-Rights Era Cases Sought,” Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, MS), November 20, 2009