An incredible story of history reclaimed is being shared by undergraduate students at Emory University, who signed up for a course entitled Georgia’s Civil Rights Cold Cases Project. In the class, they learned about Isaiah Nixon, who was killed for voting in the 1948 primary:
Isaiah Nixon was shot on Sept. 8, 1948 and died two days later in a hospital in neighboring Laurens County. The white brothers who killed him, Jim A. Johnson and Johnnie Johnson, were arrested and charged with murder and accessory to murder, respectively, according to the Cold Cases Project.
The duo claimed they had gone to Nixon’s house to hire him for work, then shot him in self-defense, although the white sheriff said they killed him for voting. The case drew attention from the NAACP, the FBI and the national press, but Jim Johnson was easily acquitted by the all-white jury, and charges against his brother were dropped.
Read the rest of the story in the report from Emory, here.