Edgar Thomas

Case summary

Incident

On October 7, 1945, 63-year-old Edgar Thomas was sitting with a friend in the cafe he owned in Union Springs, Alabama. According to a subsequent account from Thomas, the cafe was closed and he and his friend were discussing racism in Union Springs. Local police officer Dewey Bradley, along with another officer, entered the cafe, and proceeded to arrest Thomas for disorderly conduct, allegedly for swearing in his own restaurant. During the arrest, Bradley struck Thomas with a blackjack. Thomas was taken into custody for two hours and then released. According to witness testimony collected by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Thomas told some of the town’s councilmen about his experience and they responded that the two police officers should be discharged. Bradley complained that Thomas began following him on his night shifts, and claimed that Thomas was seeking retribution against him.

On the morning of Saturday, October 13, 1945, Thomas was in his cafe when Bradley and assistant police chief Hollis Whittle arrived at the store. Both officers were armed, with two pistols and a shotgun between them. Eyewitness accounts differ on what occurred next. Some said that the officers announced they were there to kill Thomas, others claimed that the officers told Thomas they had “come to get him.” Bradley and Whittle told investigators that they explained to Thomas that they were there to discuss his following of Bradley. Bradley claimed that Thomas reached under his counter for a weapon, forcing Bradley to fire at Thomas in self-defense. Whittle told investigators that Thomas “made a grab” for Bradley’s pistol, and Bradley fired, hitting Thomas in the right hand, then followed up with five more shots. Bradley told investigators he shot Thomas 10 times – six times with his .38, twice with his .45, and twice with his shotgun. Several white business owners who claimed to have witnessed the event told investigators that Bradley shot Thomas on the street outside the cafe. Additional witness testimonies allege that Bradley cornered Thomas in his business and attacked him. Regardless of the precise nature of events, witness accounts agree that Bradley shot Thomas repeatedly in the chest and head, even after Thomas had collapsed.

Aftermath

After the shooting, police chief R.L. Gardner placed Bradley in jail, allegedly “for safe keeping,” though Gardner did not tell the FBI why he might have thought Bradley was in danger. Bullock County Acting Sheriff W.P. Pickett obtained a warrant for Bradley’s arrest, placed him under arrest at the jail, and then took him before a justice of the peace, where Bradley waived a preliminary hearing and was released on $1,000 bond on a charge of manslaughter. Pickett said he did not conduct an investigation into the shooting. According to the FBI report, Pickett “was very hostile and stated frankly that he thought the Federal Government had no business butting into this case.”

On February 5, 1946, a Circuit Grand Jury in Union Springs declined to indict Bradley for manslaughter, due to lack of evidence.

One of the witnesses to Thomas’s death was Reverend James L. Pinckney, another business owner in Union Springs. Pinckney told investigators that he was standing outside Thomas’s cafe when, through the cafe window, he saw Bradley shoot Thomas. The chief of police in Union Springs visited Pinckney after Thomas’s death and told him to leave town or he would suffer the same fate as Thomas. Pinckney fled to Chicago. After making a statement to the FBI in Chicago the following March about what he witnessed in Union Springs, he asked the investigators if the FBI “would supply him with a guard should he be called upon to testify, and he was advised that this Bureau could not act as a guard for him,” according to the FBI’s report.

The FBI’s investigation into the killing of Thomas expanded after the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC) shared results of their own investigation, which described Bradley’s streak of violence against other Black residents of Union Springs, including the December 1, 1945 killing of Jesse Hightower on Main Street in Union Springs (see Hightower case summary here). The deaths of Thomas and Hightower were highlighted by national campaigns against racist police brutality, including campaigns run by International Labor Defense and the Civil Rights Congress.

FBI records note that Union Springs law enforcement officials resisted cooperating with its investigation and most of the Black Union Springs residents interviewed by the FBI stated they would not publicly testify against Bradley, citing danger to their own lives. The FBI report found that witness testimony to incidents involving Bradley were sharply divided along racial lines: Black witnesses stated Bradley shot and killed both Thomas and Hightower without cause, while white witnesses claimed the victims both made a motion as if to attack or attempt to disarm Bradley.

The FBI’s investigation of Bradley also incorporated the Hightower shooting, as well as an incident that occurred on November 3, 1945, when Bradley shot Alger Lee Gary, a 24-year-old Black veteran of the U.S. Army. Gary lost his eye as a result of the shooting. Three days after the December 1 Hightower shooting, Chief R.L. Gardner fired Bradley from the police force. Though Gardner did not specify the cause for the firing, the FBI noted that Gardner indicated that “Bradley was a little too quick on the trigger.”

In March 1946, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover shared the agency’s findings with the Department of Justice. Hoover asked if “any prosecutive action is contemplated against Bradley.” In a June 20, 1946, memo to Hoover, Caudle passed along the decision, which had been made by E. Burns Parker, the United States attorney in Montgomery, Alabama: “In view of the testimony set out in the reports, the fact that the State Court failed to find sufficient evidence to prosecute the case, and the fact that the subject has been dismissed from service by the Police Department of Union Springs, Alabama, I think it advisable to decline prosecution, and am closing the file in my office.” Caudle followed up by writing, “In view of the foregoing position of Mr. Parker and in view of the fact that in each of the incidents investigated supposedly unbiased witnesses have stated that some sort of resistance or assault was offered by the victim to the officers at the time of the shooting, the matter is being closed and no further investigation will be desired.”

Dewey Bradley died in Alabama in 1973. He was 70 years old.

Case summaries are compiled from information contained in different sources, including, but not limited to, investigative records, arrest reports, court filings, census records, birth and death certificates, transcripts, and press releases. In many cases, the records contain contradictory assertions.