James Bonard Fowler (September 10, 1933 – July 5, 2015) was a convicted drug trafficker and an Alabama state trooper, known for fatally shooting civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson on February 18, 1965, during a peaceful march by protesters seeking voting rights.
It was not until 2005 that Fowler acknowledged shooting Jackson, a young deacon in the Baptist church, claiming to have acted in self defense.
That year Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed.
[2][1] Beginning in 2007, Fowler was also being investigated by the FBI for the 1966 shooting death of Nathan Johnson, a black man fatally shot after being taken to the Alabaster jail.
After graduating, he served for a period in the US Navy from 1951 to 1953 during the Korean War as a Petty officer third class, and then attended the University of Alabama in the late 1950s.
On the night of February 18, 1965, around 500 people left Zion United Methodist Church in Marion, intending to walk to the City Jail about a half a block away, where a young civil rights worker was being held.
They were met by a crowd of Marion City police officers, county sheriff's deputies, and Alabama State Troopers.
On May 10, 2007, 42 years after the homicide, Fowler at the age of 73 was indicted by Michael Jackson, the district attorney for Perry County (and the second black district attorney in the state),[7] on charges of first degree and second degree murder for the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson (no relation).
[8] Fowler was among a number of persons who were being prosecuted in criminal cold cases from the civil rights era.
[2] Fowler apologized for the shooting but insisted that he had acted in self-defense, believing that Jackson was trying to grab his gun in the melee.
[9] In December 2007, the Anniston Star reported new information related to the 1966 shooting death of Nathan Johnson, an African-American man, allegedly by Fowler at the Alabaster, Alabama police station.
Johnson had been arrested for suspicion of drunken driving on US Highway 31 and was shot in an altercation with Fowler, then still an Alabama state trooper.
[10] According to details in Johnson's file, "obtained from the National Archives through the Freedom of Information Act", Johnson, an African-American man, had a "history of mental illness, and a "lengthy arrest record, including a manslaughter conviction in the death of a teenager" in a drunk driving crash.
"[10] In 2011, FBI officials announced that they were seeking information about the May 8, 1966 death of 34-year-old Nathan Johnson, a cold case from the civil rights era.
[5] In 2007 Barden said that after Fowler returned to the United States withdrawal from Vietnam, he called his former supervisor and apologized for his action.
[13] Fowler served with the U.S. Army in Vietnam War from 1968 to 1974 as a Sergeant First Class, and was awarded the Silver Star twice, along with the Purple Heart, for his injuries in combat during his military service.
[5] For the next two decades, Fowler returned to the United States for brief periods to take care of business in Alabama but lived primarily in Thailand.
[5] In the late 1980s Fowler testified in a military case involving an alleged murder-for-hire plot, in which an army sergeant wanted to kill his captain.