Jessie B. Hightower
Jessie B. Hightower was a 38-year-old World War II veteran and was employed by Seaboard Air Line Railroad. He and his wife, Annie, lived in Bullock County, Alabama.
Case summary
Incident
Around 5:30 p.m. on December 1, 1945, Jesse B. Hightower was in downtown Union Springs with his wife, Annie, and mother-in-law, Mary Posey, “as was the custom” on Saturdays, according to a subsequent report by the Southern Negro Youth Congress. They were talking on the sidewalk in front of the Green-Miller Furniture Company on Main Street in Union Springs. Some witnesses, including Union Springs police officer Dewey Bradley, claimed that Hightower had a knife on him and was fighting with his wife. However, in a statement Annie Hightower gave to the FBI, she said, “Jessie had been drinking some wine and he had an open wine bottle in his hand. He began talking loud to me talking about how he loved me. He always talked loud when he was drinking. I tried to get him to be quiet. Jessie and I were not fighting and we did not even touch each other.” She acknowledged he was carrying a “silver table knife” in his right hip pocket.
Bradley approached Hightower and ordered him to hand over the knife. Some witnesses claim Hightower was brandishing his knife, while others claim that Hightower had to reach in his pocket to reveal and hand over the knife. Some witnesses said Hightower surrendered the knife immediately or dropped it on the ground, while others claimed that Hightower refused to give up the knife as Bradley attempted to arrest him. Bradley began to beat Hightower with his blackjack. According to Annie Hightower, after her husband said, “Don’t hit me anymore; there’s the damned knife on the ground,” Bradley replied, “You damned son of a bitch, don’t cuss at me.” Then he pulled out his service revolver and shot Jessie Hightower in the chest. Dr. Gomez, a local Black doctor, arrived a few minutes later and pronounced Hightower dead at the scene, stating that the bullet had gone through Hightower’s heart.
Aftermath
The killing of Jessie Hightower represented Dewey Bradley’s third incident in less than two months involving the shooting of Black men. On October 13, Bradley shot and killed Edgar Thomas, and on November 3, he shot and wounded U.S. Army veteran Alger Lee Gary. (Gary lost an eye in the shooting.) On December 4, three days after the 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.”
Hightower’s killing generated extensive media coverage and calls to federal law enforcement to investigate Bradley. The Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC) conducted an investigation that highlighted this streak of violence against Black residents of Union Springs. The deaths of Thomas and Hightower were amplified by national campaigns against racist police brutality, including those run by International Labor Defense and the Civil Rights Congress. The FBI expanded their preliminary investigation into Thomas’s death to include an investigation into Hightower’s death.
On February 4, 1946, a circuit grand jury convened to consider Bradley’s actions in the killing of both Thomas and Hightower. The following day, the jury “failed to find sufficient evidence to issue a warrant” for either incident. FBI reports note that Union Springs residents were reluctant to publicly testify against Bradley, citing danger to their own lives. An 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.
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.