With a little more than a week left in Black History Month, many commemorations focus on events during the Civil War era or the early years of the Civil Rights Movement. However, struggles for equality continued well beyond. The Photo Vault looks back to a protest march staged 32 years ago today.
Lynn McKinley Jackson, a 23-year-old army private and a native of Monroe, Ga., went missing in August of 1981. He had been seen in town by several people the night before he was due back to Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Many didn’t know he was missing until the Army declared him AWOL a few weeks later.
On Dec. 8, 1981 his decomposing body was found hanging from a pine tree in the woods just outside Social Circle.
A coroner’s inquest was convened and on Feb. 16, 1982 a jury of three blacks and three whites determined Jackson’s death a suicide. After nine hours of testimony, that gave conflicting stories about Jackson’s emotional state, and 45 minutes of deliberations the matter was far from over.
The coroner said he found no signs of foul play. However, there was no suicide note and to reach the branch from which his body was found hanging, Jackson would have had to climb 20 feet straight up a pine tree with no intervening branches and wearing ordinary sneakers.
Civil rights leaders came from Atlanta to sound the rallying cry; a local Klan leader used the decision as an opportunity for recruitment.
Newspaper accounts said it was a short, terrifying march. The roadway was lined with angry white spectators, some in Klan regalia. A bottle was thrown here and there.
The 11-mile march was the culmination of a series of continuing demonstrations against what many in that area regarded as murder. Supporters joined the marchers along the way. They were met with as many as a thousand cheering blacks and just as many angry Klansmen in Monroe. About 100 state troopers wearing bulletproof vests kept the groups well separated after a fistfight broke out in the afternoon. Two blacks and two whites were arrested during the march and four handguns and a shotgun were reportedly discovered by police. By the next day, the towns were quiet again, but most blacks believed the issues remained unsettled.
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