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The Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board releases records from four more cases, including the 1948 killing of a Georgia farmer for voting

By Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board · January 31, 2025

The federal Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board today announced the release of investigative
records from four more unsolved or unresolved cold cases stemming from incidents that occurred decades ago. The latest round of releases brings to 11 the number of cases the Board has authorized for public release since last October, as part of its congressional mandate to expedite the release of hundreds of investigations into civil rights violations that occurred between 1940 through 1979. Each case, in its entirety, is viewable online at the Civil Rights Cold Case Records portal, maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration.

This month’s tranche of publicly released cases reveals details about the following incidents:

  • On October 13, 1945, a police officer in Union Springs, Bullock County, Alabama, shot and killed 63-year-old Edgar Thomas, a local cafe owner and father of 10 children. Six weeks later, the same police officer shot and killed Jessie Hightower, a 38-year-old World War II veteran. An FBI investigation determined that the officer, Dewey Bradley, had also shot a third Black man in the face, causing him to lose his eye. A circuit grand jury declined to issue a warrant for Bradley’s arrest, however, citing a lack of sufficient evidence. At least one alleged eyewitness to the Thomas shooting, a Black minister named Rev. James L. Pinckney, was so frightened at the prospect of testifying to what he saw that he left town. Read the case files here.
  • On September 8, 1948, the day of the Georgia gubernatorial Democratic primary election, Dover Carter, a 42-year-old Montgomery County farmer and father of 13, was severely beaten by a white man named Johnnie Johnson while Carter was attempting to drive a neighbor home from the polls. Later that same day, Johnson and his brother, Jim, pulled up to the rural home of Isaiah Nixon, a 28-year-old farmer and father of six. According to one account, when Nixon told the men for whom he had voted, Jim Johnson shot Nixon, twice in the legs and once in the stomach. Nixon was admitted to the nearest hospital that accepted Blacks, but died on September 10. Later that month, the federal Department of Justice authorized an FBI investigation into the attacks on Nixon and Carter, but expressed “hesitancy” to investigate “for fear that it might inflame local sentiment.” Jim Johnson was found not guilty by a local jury, and all charges against Johnnie Johnson were dropped. Read the case files here.
  • On November 29, 1974, five Atlanta residents – all Black men – left for Pensacola, Florida, on a fishing trip. The next day, their boat was found partially submerged in Santa Rosa Sound. Over the next two weeks, the bodies of the five men were found. Local and federal authorities ruled their deaths as drownings, but family members expressed skepticism, given the experience of the five men on the water and the fact that the bulk of the group’s fishing supplies was found on the shoreline. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, under its then-president Ralph David Abernathy, joined the families in pushing for an extensive investigation, citing information that the men had gotten into an argument with the owner of a baitshop the morning they went missing. The FBI declined to investigate. Read the case files here.

ABOUT THE CIVIL RIGHTS COLD CASE RECORDS REVIEW BOARD

The Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board was created as part of the Cold Case Records Collection Act of 2018, which was introduced by then-U.S. Senator Doug Jones of Alabama, a former federal prosecutor. The bill was engineered and championed by a group of Hightstown High School students in New Jersey. The bill won overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress and was signed into law by then-President Donald Trump in 2019. President Biden appointed, and the U.S. Senate approved, the four current board members, who were sworn in in early 2023. The members are Margaret Burnham (co-chair), Hank Klibanoff (co-chair), Gabrielle M. Dudley, and Dr. Brenda Stevenson. To learn more about the Review Board, as well as frequently asked questions about the Board’s work and summaries of each case it has authorized for release, visit the Board’s website at www.coldcaserecords.gov. The Board’s work is currently mandated to sunset no later than January 2027.

For media inquiries, please email Steve Fennessy, communications manager for the Civil Rights Cold
Case Records Review Board, at steve.fennessy@coldcaserecords.gov