Declaration of martial law in Russell County, Alabama
On July 22, 1954, a limited state of martial law was declared in Russell County, Alabama, by Governor Gordon Persons.
The county, particularly Phenix City, had become lawless, and Persons lost faith in the local law enforcement, which had been implicated in illegal gambling syndicates, political corruption, and the murder of Albert Patterson, the Democratic Party's nominee for Attorney General of Alabama.
Under the martial law proclamation, the city police department and the county sheriff's office were stood down, and their duties were assumed by the Alabama National Guard.
The National Guard, under Major General Walter J. Hanna, took steps to disarm the citizenry and to close down gambling establishments and premises serving alcohol.
[1] In 1916 the Alabama State Attorney General Logan Martin intervened, sending armed deputies to the city and appointing a special prosecutor to take charge.
A grand jury subsequently convicted the city marshal for accepting bribes, impeached Pal Daniel, the Russell County Sheriff, for conspiring with criminals and forced the resignation of the mayor and board of aldermen.
[2] Martin's deputies carried out the largest liquor raid in the South at that time, disposing of 1,000,000 US gallons (3,800,000 L) of whisky into the Chattahoochee River in a single day.
[3] In 1918, just across the Chattahoochee, the U.S. Army opened Fort Benning, and hundreds of soldiers were soon travelling into Russell County to visit its brothels, liquor shops and gambling houses.
[10] Despite widespread illegal lotteries being exposed in the 1938 Ritz Café disaster during which 24 people were killed after a gambling house collapsed, the state governor refused to intervene.
[14] Despite having been reluctant to intervene in Russell County's lawlessness, Persons immediately ordered the state-controlled Alabama Highway Patrol into the city.
[16] Hanna arrived in Phenix City in the early morning of June 19 with command over a number of locally-based troops and some brought from elsewhere in the state.
The operation determined that city police and county deputies were watching the guard's movements and tipping off gangsters as to the timing and location of raids.
[17][6] It was reported that the National Guard, armed with machine guns, shotguns and carbines, entered the sheriff's office and police department to disarm local law enforcement and confiscate their badges.
[17] In November 1954, when order in the city had been restored, the first free elections in decades were held, with armed guardsmen at each ballot box and supervising the count.
[30] The incident was then the only instance of martial law being declared in a US city since the Reconstruction era that was not for reasons of civil unrest or natural disaster.
[17] John Malcolm Patterson, the son of Albert, was elected Alabama's attorney general in his father's stead in 1955 and held the post until 1959, when he became governor.
