The Birmingham Effect

The Birmingham Effect is similar to the Butterfly Effect. Both systems say that a small effect can have a profound bearing on larger more complex system. For instance you may have heard with reference to the Butterfly effect, that the flapping of a butterfly’s wing could cause a hurricane. Well that’s insane, because if a butterfly wings can cause a hurricane, I’d hate to think what a leftover taco could do… but we gonna go wid it anyway. The Birmingham Effect is different in that the complex system being acted upon usually ends up with somebody saying “Throw it over that branch!!”

The date was November 29, 1979. It was a typical winter day and folks were in downtown Birmingham doing their holiday shopping and dropping it like its hot in the local bars. I remember those day well.. sitting in the bars in DC, while my old lady went shopping, watching the honeys in those tight ski pants and sweaters… getting the Jack Daniels breath smack out of my azz by my old lady because of roaming eye violations… yeah.. those were the good ole days.. anywho.. On this particular day a call went out on the police radio that a Alabama porch monkey had just robbed a Savings and Loan and we need you to pick one up so that we can put him in jail for the next hundred and twenty five years. Well they didn’t say it like that, but this was 1979 in the deep south.. where they wish a mutha would. So yeah a black suspect was identified as the perpetrator and immediately all black males in the vicinity became suspects. It was two days before his retirement eligibility when Sgt. Albert Eugene Ballard heard the police dispatch and spotted a suspect that matched the general description… black and walking near the robbery…

The man was later identified as Josephus Anderson. Now some of my information about what happened is from a local newspaper outlet called… “The Birmingham Noose..” okay it’s not called the Birmingham Noose, but I just want to emphasize the source may be bias. So “they” said Anderson had a long history of violent criminal activity… whistling at white women.. backsassing… and just being generally disrespectful when he’s around a superior.. anywho I’m bringing this up because it will be pertinent later on. So Sgt Ballard spotted Anderson and called the boy over to the car. Now no one knows what was said after Anderson went to Ballards car… he could have told him… Police: “Boy a nigra just robbed a bank up the street… now you know that’s disrespectful… get in the back.. you gonna have to do a hunet and twenty five for dat..” Anyway what was reported is that Anderson allegedly leaned into the car and shot Ballard several time and took off running down the street. Eventually other officer’s caught up with Anderson and a gun battle ensued. Anderson was shot more than once but was captured alive.. Somebody: “Naw don’t kill him in front of all these witnesses… let him commit suicide when we get to the station..”

So just doing the research on this story had me going. I mean a white police officer had allegedly been murdered by a black man in broad daylight in downtown Birmingham, Alabama,… and the black man was still alive after being chased down and cornered by official badge wearing good old boys? I mean good old boys known for making a Moe pay right there on the spot for a clear cut, mad dog, ten toes down violation? How is it I’m reading about it in a history book? It would be 5 years and three hung juries before Anderson would end up with a sentence of life without parole. You see there were no witnesses to Ballard’s murder and there were also problems with the ballistics… they couldn’t match a gun to the bullets. That’s the reason for the sarcasm when I said it was reported by the ” Birmingham Noose.” Right after the first hung jury, the Birmingham Effect begin to play out. A hung jury wasn’t going to be the only thing hanging around this @!!$.

In 1981 almost 2 years after the murder of Sgt Ballard, a lucky Anderson went to trial. Lucky because one, he had been accused of killing a well liked white police officer on the Birmingham police force, where just a decade earlier Theophilus Eugene Connor, better known a Bull Connor commanded the Birmingham Fire Dept to hose down the black protesters and had told the Birmingham Police Dept to set the dogs on them, all in front of John F. Kennedy and the people of the United States on national television. It was Connor who single handedly put a national and international spotlight on the abuses of African Americans in the deep south amid the barbarity of Jim Crow. Connor died in March of 1973. There is no reference of where he is buried, but we like to think that whenever he is buried, he was buried without them… either one. Anywho.. we got to do a story about Bull Conner one day.. he was born in 1897 and that was an interesting period in African American history… so.. let’s see, where were we?

Oh yes, lucky because one he wasn’t killed immediately or he hadn’t committed suicide by shooting himself several times in the back and two because after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, blacks were now being seated on Alabama juries. As a matter of fact Anderson’s trial was moved from Birmingham to Mobile, Alabama, for that very reason. I guess when they saw the judge tell the bailiff to put a coffin next the defendant’s table and one next to the jury box in case a mutha would, they figured they better ask for a change of venue. In Mobile, the first mixed jury ended in a deadlock… Coffin sales dropped like a rock… twelve for $10.00…

Anderson’s luck would hold up through three hung juries in Mobile, but after the second hung jury there would be repercussions. “If a black man can get away with killing a white man, we ought to be able to get away with killing a black man.” That sentiment was reportedly said by the second in command of the United Klans Of America, the Great and Powerful Oz-Billy!!.. Anywho, that night right after the prosecutor said he would seek a third trial for Anderson, Henry Hays ( son of the Oz-Billy), James Knowles and Franklin Cox decided they would strike a blow for the white man. Hays and Knowles got into their pickup truck with a rope supplied by Cox looking for a black man. The black man they eventually caught was Michael Donald. Donald was walking from the gas station after getting a pack of cigarettes for his sister. Hays and Knowles pulled up on him and asked for directions to a club. Then in the blink of an eye, they pull out Mr Ugly and forced Donald into the vehicle. They then drove him to another county and pulled over in a secluded area. Hillbilly: Boy, you gonna be just in time for the chicken dinner in the Upper Room..” Donald bolted.. Hays and Knowles chased after him. They caught him and beat him unconscious with tree limbs. With Donald lying unconscious, Hays cut his throat to make sure he was dead. They gathered up the body and hung it from a tree across the street from where Hays lived. There Donald’s lifeless body stayed until the next morning. The night of the Donald killing, reportedly members of the United Klans Of America burned a cross at the Mobile County Courthouse to celebrate the cowardly lynching.

Now being a part of the black community, I don’t have to tell you what they did next in the investigation.. what they always do when a black man is murdered. Round up all the drug dealers. Yep, at first they thought it was a drug deal gone bad, even though the local police chief had a hunch it was Klan related. I mean that didn’t take rocket science to figure out… He was hanging across the street in front of the leader of the Alabama Klu Klux Klan’s house detectives… Well Donald’s mother told them her son was not involved in drugs and she wasn’t having it. She pulled out the flip and made the call.. 1 800 JESSE JACKSON. Jackson organized a protest with dozens if not hundreds of disrespectful young, strong, loud and dangerous black men and women!! They demanded answers and if we didn’t get none… well “Y’all bedda to be fixin to call Jake at State Farm to see if you covered..!! At first the FBI had decided to end the investigation and let them burn the shat down, but Thomas Figures, a US Attorney and his brother Michael Figures, a state senator stepped in and encouraged the FBI to continue the investigation. In 1983 they arrested Knowles and Hays. The following year they arrest Franklin Cox who had supplied the rope. Hays father, Benjamin was also indicted. At first Hays was given a life sentence, but the judge overruled the jury and Hays was sent to Holman Federal Corrections Center, where on June 6, 1997, he got a chance to get up close and personal with “Yellow Mama,” Alabama’s nickname for the electric chair. They say he hollered like a little biatch… who is they? They is the writer of this article… Anywho, this had been the first time since 1913 that a white man had been executed for a white on black crime in the state of Alabama. In Florida no white person has ever been put to death for a white on black crime. So not only was Hays the first person executed since 1913 for killing a black man in Alabama, he was also the first KKK member to be fried like he was an cheap entree on the dollar menu at McDonalds. “Yep I got one right in my waistband and I sleep with it at night..” anywhooo.. James Knowles aka “Rat Fink” ratted Cox and the other pointy hats out that set a cross burning at the courthouse. He avoided the dirt bath and was given a life sentence. He was 17 at the time of the murder and has since been paroled. Yep the rat fink is out here with us.. at least I think he is.. that is unless he has had a talk with the Grand Cyclops or whateva the $##@ they call him, then like they said in a movie I heard.. ” We’s all negro’s now..” Franklin Cox went to trial after the charge was initially discharged because the statute of limitations on criminal conspiracy in Alabama is 3 years. Cox was the hillbilly who gave Hays the rope. The discharge was overturned and in 1988 Cox again escaped justice because of a mistrial. The state was not finish.. “Line him up again..” In 1989 Cox was convicted of being an accomplice in the murder of Michael Donald and given life in prison. Life in Alabama if the crime included a weapon is 20 years to 99 years. Cox has also been paroled and is now reported looking for Knowles, so they can talk about old times… Cox: “Hey James… can you meet me and some of the guys in the woods tonight… let’s have couple of drinks and talk about old times… we would love to see you … It’s been 25 years since we last talked…” As for Hay’s father, Benjamin Hays (71) indicted for inciting the murder, well the old geyser had a heart attack before the trial and passed away. Hay’s Lawyer: “Look old man.. Ima give it to you straight.. there’s gonna be more nigra’s in that place than at a Cassius Clay Friday night barbecue.. and they all gonna want one thing from you… and it’s not gonna be very pleasant.. Hey Benjamin??… Ben are you all right???… Somebody call an ambulance!!… Ben??”

The Birmingham Effect… so you see something that happened in 1979 led to something even more notorious 2 years later. Michael was killed for an act that he had nothing to do with and that had happened years earlier, by a man he had never met … simply because of the color of his skin. In the following years his mother Beulah Mae Donald and Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, brought a wrongful death suit against the United Klans of America in federal court in the Southern District of Alabama. An all white jury found for Michael’s mother and she was awarded $7 million dollars. Payment of the judgment bankrupted the United Klans of America. The group was forced to settle the suit by selling the title to its two-story “national headquarters” building for $51,875 with the proceeds going to his mother. Beulah Mae Donald died the following year. The case set a new precedent in that civil legal action could now be brought against other racist hate groups in the United States. There is a marker at the site of the Michael Donald murder and the street has been named after him. For further information on this heinous crime, CNN produced a movie called “The People v. The Klan,” that focuses on Mrs Donald’s fight to bring to justice the killers of her son.

Thanks for reading Hill1News.