George Love

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

George Lee Love, a Black veteran from Attala County, Mississippi, returned to his home state in 1957 and took a job picking cotton.

On Jan. 7, 1958, citizens of Ruleville in Sunflower County awoke to the news that Anthony and Estelle Potter, an elderly Black couple, had been robbed and killed overnight. The perpetrator set their house on fire before fleeing the scene.

Later that day, George Love went shopping in Ruleville. According to a January 1958 letter from Mississippi NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers, a clerk at Dattel’s Grocery & Market became suspicious of the amount of money that Love was spending and called the police. The Montgomery Advertiser reported that the clerk noticed Love’s money had “brown spots indicating they had been in a billfold a long time,” while other newspapers stated that the cash was noticeably “scorched.”

Exie Jennings, the 59-year-old white Ruleville marshal, responded to the clerk’s call. According to Evers, when Jennings arrived and asked Love what he knew about the Potters, Love began walking away. Several newspapers reported that Love was related to the Potters, but Evers wrote in his letter that Love’s wife, Ida May, was their niece. He said that George Love knew about the Potters’ “prosperity.”

Sunflower County Sheriff Edward Williams told reporters that when Love tried to walk away from Jennings, the marshal allegedly told him to stop and submit to a search. Love took out a pistol, shot Jennings three times, and ran. In response, a search party gathered to find him.

Several newspapers reported that, in the early hours of Jan. 8, a “posse” of 25 white men — and their bloodhounds — found Love hiding in some vegetation on Livingston Plantation about three miles from Ruleville. Williams told members of the press that, when the group found Love, “He fired on the officers and the officers returned the fire and killed him,” adding, “That’s all there was to it.”

Aftermath

The NAACP launched an independent investigation immediately following Love’s death. Evers wrote in a Jan. 10, 1958 letter that the “volunteers” for Love’s search party came from nearby Bolivar, Humphreys, Leflore, and Tallahatchie counties. They carried guns and, according to what Evers called “reliable reports,” were known to belong to the White Citizens’ Council.

Evers stated in his letter that he personally viewed Love’s body at the Smith-Dillon Funeral Home in Indianola on Jan. 9. According to Evers’ observations, Love had been shot in the buttocks, the back of his left calf, and his right leg. Evers also wrote, “There was a bullet hole in the back right of his head which, to me, indicates that he had been shot from behind.” The Baltimore Afro-American reported that Love’s body had been “riddled” with 76 bullets and also noted that, as of Jan. 25, 1958, a coroner’s inquest had not been conducted.

Love was buried at Bethlehem Cemetery in McAdams, Mississippi.

Initial newspaper reports linked Love with two separate killings and robberies that ended in arson. After Love became a suspect in the deaths of the Potters, law enforcement officials in Sunflower County told the press that they believed, based on “circumstantial evidence,” that Love might have also been responsible for a similar incident that had occurred in Ackerman in September 1957. By Jan. 21, however, the Jackson Daily News reported that Public Safety Commissioner Tom Scarbrough’s investigation “cleared George Love of any part” in the latter case.

House Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. of New York and Washington Director for the NAACP Clarence Mitchell Jr. registered their interest in Love’s case with the Department of Justice (DOJ) in mid-January. The FBI field office in Memphis advised headquarters on Jan. 24 that it had yet to receive any “complaint” of federal law violations associated with Love’s killing. FBI Investigative Division Assistant Director Alex Rosen wrote in a letter to an assistant that the FBI considered Love’s killing “a local murder.”

On Jan. 25, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover shared the facts of Love’s death with the U.S. Attorney General. The pistol found on Love’s body, Hoover wrote, “matched the description of a pistol which was described as having been in the home of the murdered Negro couple.” Hoover also noted that Love had $250 in cash on his person at the time of his death. He concluded the letter by stating, “no investigation is being conducted by this Bureau concerning the killing of Love.”

In the weeks that followed, newspapers reported that Williams had secured signed confessions from both Love’s wife and a 24-year old man named Otho Lee Cooper admitting that they had been accomplices to the Potter killing, robbery, and arson. According to the Jackson Advocate, Love’s wife alleged that she and Cooper had accompanied her husband to the Potter home on the evening of Jan. 6, 1958 to ask to borrow some money. When the Potters refused, George Love beat the couple with an iron wrench, took $486 from Anthony Potter’s wallet, poured kerosene on a bed and the Potters’ bodies, and set the house on fire.

The Jackson Advocate reported that Cooper had been “bound over to the Grand Jury” for his part in the Potter incident, while Love’s wife was “given time to procure an attorney.” The outcome of these legal proceedings is unknown.

By the end of January, newspapers across the country reported that, following review of Evers’ report, NAACP Mississippi State President C.R. Darden had dubbed Love’s killing a “legalized lynching.”

Jennings died in 1973 at age 74. Williams died in Sunflower County in 1981. He was 83.

The FBI reopened Love’s case in 2008 following the passage of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. The FBI spoke with several individuals in Ruleville, including members of the police department, who advised that Williams, Trimble, and Marlow were deceased. The FBI also searched for records at the Sunflower County Circuit Court and Justice Court, as well as the local library, but were unable to locate any additional information about Love’s killing.

On May 24, 2011, the DOJ closed Love’s file, noting that “despite extensive efforts, no living subject has been identified.” The DOJ also determined that there was not enough evidence to “demonstrate that the subject or subjects acted with willfulness in shooting and killing Love” or to “refute the version of events reported in the newspapers at the time indicating that the subject or subjects acted in self-defense or that the shooting was otherwise legally justified as a necessary use of force in the apprehension of a felon fleeing arrest.”

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:

Archival Records

• NAACP Papers: NAACP Branch Department Files, 1956-65; Evers, Medgar, Field Secretary, 1958; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
• NAACP Papers: NAACP General Office File; Crime, Mississippi, 1956-65; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
• Parchman Inmate Register for George Love; Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, Mississippi
• WWII Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946; Record Group 64; National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland

Genealogical Records

• City Directory for Jackson, Michigan, United States, 1954, 1955
• Death Certificates for Hinds County, Mississippi, United States, 1958, Mississippi State Department of Health Vital Records
• Population Schedule for Attala County, Mississippi, United States Federal Census, 1930, 1940
• Population Schedule for Choctaw County, Mississippi, United States Federal Census, 1950
• Population Schedule for Sunflower County, Mississippi, United States Federal Census, 1950
• Population Schedule for Yazoo County, Mississippi, United States Federal Census, 1940
• World War II Draft Registration Cards, Mississippi, 1940

Newspaper Articles

• “Ex-Jacksonian Slain After Killing Three,” Jackson Citizen Patriot (Jackson, MI), January 11, 1958
• “Holmes Negro Goes to Jail on Perjury Charge This Week,” The Durant News (Durant, MS), October 21, 1943
• “Justice Dept. Defers to State in Negro Death,” The Montgomery Advertiser (Montgomery, AL), January 24, 1958
• “Love’s 2 Accomplices Make Signed Confession,” The Enterprise-Tocsin (Indianola, MS), January 16, 1958
• “Miss. Posse Slaying Called ‘Legal Lynching’ By Darden,” Atlanta Daily World, January 29, 1958
• “No Inquest Held in Miss. Lynching,” The Baltimore Afro-American, January 25, 1958
• Obituary for Edward Weir Williams, The Enterprise-Tocsin (Indianola, MS), January 15, 1981
• Obituary for Exie M. Jennings, The Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, MS), May 13, 1973
• “Relatives of Possee[sic] Victim Confess Arson-Slaying of Aged Couple,” Jackson Advocate (Jackson, MS), January 25, 1958
• “Sheriff Rips Powell Claim of Murder,” The Chicago Defender, February 1, 1958
• “Slay Arson-Murder Suspect after Ruleville Marshal Shot,” The Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, MS), January 8, 1958
• “Slaying a Legal Lynching,” Philadelphia Tribune, February 4, 1958
• “Suspected Slayer Killed in Miss.,” Atlanta Daily World, January 10, 1958
• “Woman Will Spend Six Months in Jail for Killing,” The Durant News (Durant, MS), October 28, 1943
• Jay Milner, “Believed Slayer of Ackerman Trio and Negro Couple,” The Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, MS), January 8, 1958