Prosecutor vows to find justice in civil rights killing
By Jerry Mitchell
Gannett News Service
The shooting death of a Vietnam veteran that sparked the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" march in Selma will be the next civil rights-era crime to make it to a jury's hands, an Alabama prosecutor vowed Friday.
Speaking at a conference at Harvard Law School, Dallas County District Attorney Michael Jackson of Selma said he would be presenting evidence to a grand jury May 9 in the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson in the west Alabama town of Marion 42 years ago.
Jimmie Lee Jackson did not live to see his grandfather, Cager Lee, finally receive a voting card in his early 80s at the Marion, Alabama Town Hall, August 20, 1965. The day came just two weeks after the Voting Rights Act had been signed into law by President Johnson. Congress might not have passed the law in 1965 without the pressure it felt as the whole world watched the spectacle of the Selma to Montgomery March five months earlier.
Labels: Ben Greenberg, civil rights movement, cold cases, Jerry Mitchell, Jimmy Lee Jackson, Mississippi, Vietnam veteran
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