Clarence Pickett

Case summary

Incident

Clarence Pickett, a Black pastor from Union Springs, Alabama, joined the ministry as a teenager in the 1920s. “The Boy Preacher,” as he was known, assumed his first pastorate at Union Baptist Church in East Point, Georgia, before briefly attending Morehouse College in Atlanta.

Pickett pastored in Georgia and South Carolina until 1940, when he moved to Cleveland, Ohio, to lead a church there. Newspapers reported in 1944 that Pickett embarked on a privately funded nationwide evangelist tour before taking on a pastorate in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, in 1945.

Sometime between 1946 and 1951, he returned to Georgia, living and working in Columbus. During this time, documented instances of Pickett’s mental health struggles surfaced in local papers and police reports. Between 1952 and 1957, Columbus police arrested Pickett more than a dozen times, primarily on “Plain Drunk” charges.

In December 1956, Pickett was hospitalized at Milledgeville Asylum. According to January 1958 testimony from Pickett’s older sister, Lillie Banks, Pickett was sent to Milledgeville because he was “insane,” but it was her understanding that he was “cured” by the time of his June 1957 discharge. Pickett returned to Columbus to live with Banks and work as an advertising salesman for the Columbus World, a Black newspaper edited by his friend, Percy Taylor.

On the morning of Dec. 21, 1957, Pickett went to the Columbus World office with Banks and his close friend, Bessie Smith, to collect his weekly payment from Taylor. Banks, Smith, and Taylor later testified that Pickett became agitated during the meeting, so they convinced him to return home. They walked Pickett out to the car parked outside the adjoining Dixie Theater, and tried to help him inside. Banks and Taylor said that Pickett used his feet to hold the car door open as Taylor tried to shut it.

Banks and Smith took Pickett home, arriving around 12:30 p.m. Pickett left the house at 3 p.m. to visit a pastor friend. An hour later, according to white Columbus Patrolman Bartow Robinson’s statement to police, he and another officer spoke with white grocery proprietor Avis Malone. According to Robinson, Malone reported that a “Negro man… in a drunken condition” had just left her store after doing a “lot of cursing” and making several “smart remarks.” The officers left the store in their patrol car to search for this individual.

During a coroner’s hearing, Robinson testified that he had to “slam on the brakes to keep from hitting” Pickett, who he described as “staggering” and “cussing” in the street. The Atlanta Daily World reported, however, that neighbors told Banks that the officers “came speeding to him like they would run him over,” as Pickett put his hands up and said, “I’m not drunk. What are you going to do, run over me?”

The officers arrested Pickett on the charge of “Plain Drunk” and drove him to the Columbus City Jail, arriving at 4:20 p.m. Officers Joseph Eugene Cameron and S.D. Wright, both white, escorted Pickett to the cell area and locked Pickett in “the tank,” typically reserved for individuals charged with drunkenness.

Cameron and two trusties then proceeded to a cell across the hall, known as the “bullpen” or “runaround,” to serve supper. Several people confined in the runaround later testified that they could hear Pickett cursing in the tank. They said that Cameron made a comment about quieting Pickett before leaving the runaround and entering the tank.

In his initial statement to police on Dec. 23, Cameron said he transferred everyone but Pickett from the tank to the runaround because he thought Pickett was going to start a fight. He stated he did not return to the tank until 7 p.m., at which time he observed Pickett singing. An hour later, Cameron said, he tried to move Pickett to the runaround but was unable to wake him up.

Cameron provided a different version of events to police in a Jan. 3 statement, telling officers that when he entered the tank to stop a fight, Pickett tried to grab his collar. In response, Cameron said, he punched Pickett in the chest, knocking him to the ground. According to Cameron, Pickett grabbed his leg, so he kicked him away and used his blackjack to “tap” the soles of the shoes of the other men in the tank to wake them up.

Witnesses in the runaround stated that, through the cell’s window, they observed Cameron enter the tank, back Pickett against the wall, and repeatedly punch him in the face, chest, and stomach until he fell to the floor. According to these witnesses, Cameron then beat Pickett with a blackjack and kicked him in his stomach and sides until he was silent.

At 6 a.m. the next morning, an officer escorted Pickett from the tank to the runaround. Several individuals in the runaround gave statements to the FBI describing Pickett as bent over in pain, complaining about his stomach. At 9 a.m., an officer administered Pickett some aspirin. Around noon, Taylor posted Pickett’s bond and sent Jimmy Owens and Albert Carter to pick him up from the jail.

Owens and Carter brought Pickett to Dixie Theater to meet Taylor. Realizing Pickett was unable to walk, Taylor asked Owens and Carter to take Pickett home and put him in bed.

Banks stated that when Pickett arrived home, he complained about pain in his stomach, was unable to urinate or defecate, and told her, “Sister the polices has done killed me. They kicked me in my side and stomach.”  Banks called for an ambulance 20 minutes later.

Pickett and Banks arrived at the Medical Center Hospital around 1 p.m. Columbus police dispatched Patrolman A.L. McCrone to the hospital, who arrived as Dr. John Edgar Harris, a white physician, began his examination.

In his statement to police, McCrone said that after the exam Harris commented, “I definitely think he is putting on.” Banks testified that when Harris told her to take Pickett home, he said, “He doesn’t have any broken bones. He’s putting on airs.”

In his exam notes, Harris noted there was no “recent evidence of trauma” around Pickett’s chest. He assessed Pickett’s stomach pain as “moderate generalized abdominal tenderness” and described the urinalysis results as not “grossly bloody” although “cloudy, turbid, yellowish-orange” in color. Harris added that, given that Pickett “went to sleep on the examining table,” it appeared his “trauma was not of a serious nature.” Staff administered a painkiller to Pickett, discharged him, and instructed him to take aspirin every four hours.

Pickett and Banks returned home at 5 p.m. When Bessie Smith arrived to check on Pickett two hours later, she testified, Pickett told her, “Baby, they done killed me. I am dying.” Smith, his longtime friend, applied a salve to Pickett’s stomach and attempted to feed him soup but, according to Smith, Pickett “jumped up in bed and hollered” in pain when he tried to swallow. Smith left Pickett and Banks’s home around 11:30 p.m.

Smith returned the following morning at 7 a.m. She testified that Pickett once again told her he was dying. An hour later, Banks tried calling another doctor, but was unable to reach him. At 1:30 p.m., Banks called for an ambulance to take Pickett to the hospital.

Doctors pronounced Pickett dead on arrival at 2:30 p.m.

Aftermath

The county medical examiner conducted an autopsy less than an hour after Pickett’s death, determining cause of death as “Shock and toxemia due to: Peritonitis, resulting from traumatic rupture of the duodenum” – contrary to Harris’s assessment during initial examination.

Pickett’s funeral was held on Dec. 30, 1957, at Metropolitan Baptist Church in Columbus. Local clergy set up collections at the funeral and organized donations at churches across the city to assist Banks with attorney fees.

Banks’ attorney, Joe Ray, contacted the FBI’s field office in Atlanta in the days following Pickett’s death. Ray told Atlanta Daily World reporters that, “the federal agency will have jurisdiction if it is determined that Pickett was beaten in jail by police.” The FBI began investigating Pickett’s death on Dec. 31, 1957.

FBI agents interviewed Cameron on Jan. 3, 1958. He declined to provide any formal statement without his attorney other than, “I don’t believe I killed that negro.” The same day, the Columbus Police Department charged Cameron with murder, arrested him, and incarcerated him at the city jail.

Following the coroner’s hearing on Jan. 8, a jury determined that “C.H. Pickett came to his death as a result of a blow or blows struck by Officer Cameron.” Cameron was indicted for murder and his bond was set at $5,000.

At the end of January, New York Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and NAACP leader Clarence Mitchell Jr. met with authorities at the U.S. Attorney General’s office to request updates on Pickett’s case.

Cameron’s murder trial took place on April 23, 1958, in the Superior Court of Muscogee County. Among the witnesses who testified was the county coroner, who told the jury that Pickett’s autopsy revealed an intestinal rupture and “extensive hemorrhage” resulting from “heavy, blunt violence to the abdominal wall” inflicted within 72 hours of his death.

Columbus Police Officer J.D. Quattlebaum and City Court Investigator James Scoven, both white, testified they saw Taylor, Smith, and Banks outside the Dixie Theater with Pickett on Dec. 21. According to Quattlebaum and Scoven, Taylor punched Pickett in the stomach to force him into the car. In their testimony, Taylor, Smith, and Banks all stated that Taylor did not hit Pickett.

When Cameron testified, he recounted his World War II and Korean War experience. He told the jury that he believed Pickett was “very intelligent,” adding that he had read one of the books Pickett had authored. He stated that he entered Pickett’s cell on Dec. 21 to prevent a fight, striking Pickett defensively after Pickett grabbed his collar.

Several witnesses who were incarcerated at the jail at the same time as Pickett also testified. They stated that they saw Cameron repeatedly punch and kick Pickett until he lost consciousness. One witness said that he asked Cameron the day of Pickett’s death if he was afraid of getting in trouble. Cameron allegedly told the witness, “No, I don’t think I will. The Negro waited too long to say anything about it.”

An all-white, all male jury deliberated for one hour and 35 minutes before finding Cameron not guilty. The next day, the Columbus Ledger reported that Solicitor General John Land had commented to the jury that the trial, because it involved a police officer, was one of the “most distasteful” of his career. The Columbus Police Department reinstated Cameron on April 25.

The Pittsburgh Courier reported that Percy Taylor, Pickett’s journalist friend, received persistent threats from white residents of Columbus following the February 1956 killing of NAACP leader Dr. Thomas Brewer across the street from Dixie Theater. In the aftermath of Pickett’s killing and Cameron’s trial, Taylor fled Georgia with his wife and eight children.

The FBI requested a copy of the court transcript in May 1958 to “ascertain if there was a complete presentation of the facts” and if the prosecution had been “forceful.” The court reporter sent the transcript to the FBI on Nov. 28, 1958. The following year, the Department of Justice (DOJ) reported that, after review, it determined that Pickett’s case had been “vigorously prosecuted” and formally issued a “Notice to Close File” on April 1, 1959.

Cameron died in 1968 at age 43, still a member of the Columbus Police Department.

The FBI and DOJ reopened Pickett’s case in April 2009 following the DOJ’s 2007 Cold Case Initiative and 2008 Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. The FBI determined that Cameron was deceased and, on April 28, 2010, the DOJ concluded, in light of Cameron’s death the case did “not constitute a prosecutable violation of federal civil rights statutes” and closed it.

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

• Certificate of Death, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Georgia, United States, 1937
• Marriage License, Russell County, Alabama, United States, 1898
• Population Schedule for Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States Federal Census, 1950
• Population Schedule for Bullock County, Alabama, United States Federal Census, 1910
• Population Schedule for Muscogee County, Georgia, United States Federal Census, 1950
• U.S. Find a Grave Index, 1968

Newspaper Articles

• “5 Witnesses Linked Officer to Blows to Late Minister,” Atlanta Daily World, April 26, 1958
• “A Legal Lynching? Ga. Jailer Freed in Slaying of Minister,” The Afro-American (Baltimore, MD), May 3, 1958
• “Acquitted Officer to Be Re-Hired: To Fire 3 Negroes,” Atlanta Daily World, May 15, 1958
• “Baptist Minister Returns to Atlanta,” Augusta Chronicle (Augusta, GA), November 5, 1933
• “Bethel Baptist Church to Install Pastor,” The Pittsburgh Courier, July 21, 1945
• “Blows from Officer Caused Minister’s Death, Jury Rules,” Atlanta Daily World, January 9, 1958
• “Break Ground for Park,” Columbus Ledger, April 26, 1953
• “City Detective Joseph Cameron Dies,” Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus, GA), September 30, 1968
• “City to Pay Man for Damages in Auto Crash,” Columbus Ledger, May 27, 1959
• “Court Restrains Minister from Occupying His Pulpit,” Atlanta Daily World, July 29, 1932
• “Deny Cop Bond in Cleric’s Death,” Daily Defender (Chicago, IL), January 8, 1958
• “Detective Has Heart Attack,” Columbus Ledger, July 19, 1968
• “Dr. C. H. Pickett to Preach Sermons at Tabernacle Today,” Augusta Chronicle (Augusta, GA), August 20, 1933
• “FBI Agrees to Probe Death of 42-Year-Old Minister,” Atlanta Daily World, January 3, 1958
• “Five GIs Named in Assault Case,” Columbus Ledger, May 10, 1952
• “Georgia Cop Kills Former Pittsburgh Pastor,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 11, 1958
• “Joseph Cameron, City Detective, Dies at Tuskegee,” Columbus Ledger, September 30, 1968
• “Joseph Cameron, McLendon said in Fair Shape,” Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus, GA), February 16, 1959
• “Justice Dept. Defers Pickett Case to State,” Atlanta Daily World, January 25, 1958
• “Marriage Licenses,” The Cincinnati Enquirer (Cincinnati, OH), September 27, 1940
• “Minister’s Rites Will Be Completed,” Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus, GA), December 25, 1957
• “Officer Arrested Following Death of 42-Year-Old Minister,” Atlanta Daily World, January 4, 1958
• “Ousted Minister Threatens to Continue Case,” Cleveland Call and Post, December 30, 1944
• “Pickett Death Hearing Monday; Policeman Held,” Atlanta Daily World, January 5, 1958
• “Rev. C. H. Pickett Called to Post in Spartanburg, S.C.,” Atlanta Daily World, December 8, 1937
• “Rev. C. H. Pickett Denies Severance,” Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus, GA), November 29, 1956
• “Rev. C. H. Pickett Guest in City,” Cleveland Call and Post, December 4, 1954
• “Rev. C. H. Pickett Resigns Pastorate,” Augusta Chronicle (Augusta, GA), January 9, 1938
• “Rev. Pickett Denies ‘Tie’ with Democrats,” Cleveland Call and Post, October 18, 1941
• “Rev. Pickett Regains His Pulpit,” Atlanta Daily World, July 30, 1932
• “Rev. Pickett Takes Bride at ‘Surprise,’” Baltimore Afro-American, October 22, 1938
• “Tabernacle Baptist Inaugurates Pastor,” Cleveland Call and Post, December 7, 1940
• “Young Minister Gives Up Pastorate for Nationwide Evangelistic Tour,” Cleveland Call and Post, June 10, 1944
• George M. Coleman, “Ministers Back Effort to Locate Those Involved in Pickett’s Death,” Atlanta Daily World, January 9, 1958
• George M. Coleman, “Policeman Bound over in Death of Minister,” Atlanta Daily World, January 7, 1958
• George M. Coleman, “Sister Says Rev. Pickett Recognized Death Was Near,” Atlanta Daily World, January 8, 1958
• B. Joseph Johnson Sr., “Impressive Funeral Rites Held for Late Rev. C. H. Pickett, Atlanta Daily World, January 1, 1958
• Cliff MacKay, “Grant Permanent Injunction Barring Rev. Pickett,” Atlanta Daily World, August 7, 1932
• Juanita Morrow, “Court Decides in Favor of Congregation,” Cleveland Call and Post, December 23, 1944
• Ethel L. Payne, “FBI Probes Two Dixie Killings,” The Chicago Defender, February 1, 1958
• Ed Sullivan, “FBI May Be Asked to Probe Death of Pickett,” Columbus Ledger, December 30, 1957
• Ben Walburn, “Cameron Bound Over; Attorneys Seek Bond,” Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus, GA), January 7, 1958
• Ben Walburn, “Jury Rules in Inquest on Pickett,” Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus, GA), January 9, 1958
• S.C. Webb, “Aliquippa, Pa.,” The Pittsburgh Courier, November 3, 1945
• Al Wise, “About Town,” Atlanta Daily World, January 13, 1953