James Bonard Fowler Pleads Guilty To Manslaughter In Death That Sparked Selma March: MARION, Ala. — A former state trooper took a plea deal Monday in the 1965 slaying of a black man that prompted the 'Bloody Sunday' march at Selma and helped galvanize America's civil rights movement.
Indicted for murder more than four decades after the fatal shooting, James Bonard Fowler, 77, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of second-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to six months in jail.
It was a mixed victory for civil rights era prosecutions. The prosecutor and Jackson family members did not get the murder conviction they sought, but the jail time and an apology from Fowler seemed to help close a painful chapter in U.S. history.
Bloody Sunday helped lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and the killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson was an integral part of that story.
