On the evening of July 13, 1965, Hubert Damon Strange shot Willie Brewster as Brewster drove past him on Highway 202 outside

Anniston, Alabama Anniston is the county seat of Calhoun County in Alabama and is one of two urban centers/principal cities of and included in the Anniston-Oxford Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2010 census, the population of the city was 23,106. Acc ...

; two days later, Brewster died in a hospital. In December of that year, Strange was convicted of second-degree murder; this was the first time in the history of

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that a white man was convicted of killing a black man.

Killing

On July 15, 1965, Brewster was driving home with his coworkers from a nightshift at the Union Foundry, when shots were fired into the car by

white supremacist White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White s ...

Hubert Damon Strange. Brewster was hit in the neck and died three days afterwards from his wounds. ''

The Anniston Star ''The Anniston Star'' is the daily newspaper serving Anniston, Alabama, and the surrounding six-county region. Average Sunday circulation in September 2004 was 26,747. However, by 2020 it was approximately half of this. The newspaper is locally ow ...

'' published a full-page advertisement announcing that they would "pledge the sum of $20,000 to the person who supplies information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the shooting Thursday night of Willie Brewster." Hubert Damon Strange was later convicted of the murder by an all-white jury on December 2, 1965. After seven hours of deliberation, the jury sentenced him to 10 years in prison. It was the first such decision by any all-white jury in Alabama. The plot of shooting a black person was allegedly hatched at Ku Klux Klan member Kenneth Adams' filling station the night before Brewster was killed. The men behind the killing belonged to the

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, a violent Neo-Nazi group whose members had been involved in church bombings and murders of blacks.

Aftermath

Strange never served his sentence: he was released pending appeal, and in 1967 was killed in a fight.The Death of Willie Brewster: Where are they now?
by John Fleming, in ''The Anniston Star''; published March 25, 2009 His appeal was subsequently dismissed.
, at

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Legacy

A memorial marker was erected near the site of the shooting in 2016, by the City of Anniston Historic Trails Program. Brewster's name was placed on the

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's list of Civil Rights Martyrs.

References

1965 murders in the United States Racially motivated violence against African Americans Murdered African-American people July 1965 events in the United States Crimes in Alabama Civil rights movement People murdered in Alabama Deaths by firearm in Alabama Anniston, Alabama {{civil-rights-movement-stub