[1] On July 15, 1965, Brewster was driving home with his coworkers from a nightshift at the Union Foundry, when shots were fired into the car by white supremacist Hubert Damon Strange.

The Anniston Star published a full-page advertisement announcing that they would "pledge the sum of $20,000 to the person who supplies information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the shooting Thursday night of Willie Brewster.

[3] The plot of shooting a black person was allegedly hatched at Ku Klux Klan member Kenneth Adams' filling station the night before Brewster was killed.

[2] The men behind the killing belonged to the National States' Rights Party, a violent white supremacist group whose members had been involved in church bombings and murders of blacks.

In 1969, Billy Claude Clayton was convicted of first degree manslaughter for killing Strange and sentenced to one year and one day in prison.

[6][7] In 1973, Johnny Ira DeFries was convicted of first degree murder for killing a man named John C. McVeigh during an argument.

[9][5] In 1998, Clarence Lewis Blevins was sentenced to 13 years in federal prison on charges of soliciting murder-for-hire and illegally manufacturing firearms.