Willie Edwards

Willie Edwards, Jr. (1932 - January 23, 1957) was a 25-year-old African American, husband and father, murdered by members of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan.

Murder dismissed

Recently hired to drive trucks for Winn-Dixie, Willie Edwards left the afternoon of January 23, 1957, never to return home. Three months passed before his body washed up on the shores of the Alabama River. Officials stated that decomposition made it impossible to determine the cause of death.

In 1976, then State Attorney General Bill Baxley re-opened the Edwards case. Four people were arrested and charged with Edward's murder: Sonny Kyle Livingston Jr., 38, Henry Alexander, 46, James York, 73 and Raymond Britt (Jr). Britt broke the long silence with his sworn affidavit (in exchange for immunity), dated February 20 1976. In the statement to Attorney General Bill Baxley, Britt describes how on the night of January 23, 1957, he along with three other men beat and forced Edwards to jump off the Tyler-Goodwin Bridge into the Alabama River.

Alabama Judge Frank Embry dismissed the charges, even with Britt's sworn testimony because no cause of death was ever established. He concluded that "merely forcing a person to jump from a bridge does not naturally and probably lead to the death of such person." Edwards fell 125 feet (27 m), from the bridge into the Alabama River below.

Case Re-opened

References

* [http://www.majorcox.com/columns/edwards1.htm "Justice Still Absent in Bridge Death", Major W. Cox, Montgomery Advertiser, March 2 1999]
*"Suspects Bound In 1957 Slaying", Montgomery Advertiser, February 27 1976
* [http://www.thehistorychannel.co.uk/site/tv_guide/full_details/Crime/programme_1282.php "COLD CASE FILES: Episode 34", The History Channel, December 23 2004]
* [http://www.rickross.com/reference/kkk/kkk16.html "A Changing South Revisits Its Unsolved Racial Killings", Emily Yellin, New York Times, November 8 1999]