The Rev. James Reeb was a white Unitarian Universalist minister who worked with poor people in Boston. Although he was married and had four young children, he answered the call of Dr. Martin Luther King for clergy to come to Selma, Alabama, to protest violence by state troopers against civil rights marchers.

On March 9, 1965, Reeb and two other UU ministers, Rev. Orloff Miller and Rev. Clark Olsen, were walking back after dinner to a meeting led by Dr. King when they were attacked by a group of white men. One hit Rev. Reeb in the head with a club. The blow was fatal; Rev. Reeb died March 11, 1965.

(January 1, 1927 — March 11, 1965). Reeb was an American white Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston, Massachusetts who, while marching for civil rights in Selma, Alabama, was beaten to death by segregationists [1]. He was 38 years old.

James Reeb was born in Wichita, Kansas. As a Unitarian Universalist minister, Reeb was active in the civil rights movement, and encouraged his parishioners to do the same. With his wife and four children, he lived in poor black neighborhoods where he felt he could do the most good. Until a few months before his death, he had been Assistant Minister at All Souls Church, Unitarian in Washington, D.C.

A member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Reeb took part in the Selma to Montgomery protest march in 1965. While in Selma on March 9, Reeb was attacked by a white mob armed with clubs, which inflicted massive head injuries. He died in a Birmingham hospital two days later. His death resulted in a national outcry against the activities of white racists in the Deep South, although some expressed indignation that it took the death of a white man to incite such a national outcry. This is to be compared with the case of Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was shot by police in Selma two weeks earlier while protecting his mother from a beating; his case attracted much less national attention.

President Lyndon B. Johnson declared the events in Selma "an American tragedy," which, he said, should strengthen people's determination "to bring full and equal and exact justice to all of our people." Johnson's voting rights proposal reached Congress the Monday after Reeb's death.

In 1965, civil rights supporter James Reeb, a white Unitarian minister, was murdered in Selma, Ala. Three men were arrested, tried and acquitted. No one was ever held to account.

Elmer Cook, William Stanley Hoggle and Namon "Duck" Hoggle (from left to right) were charged with first-degree murder after James Reeb's death and later acquitted at trial.

4th Killer Identified years later

The murder of Boston minister James Reeb in 1965 drew national attention at the time and spurred passage of the Voting Rights Act, which outlawed the Jim Crow voting practices that had disenfranchised millions of black Americans.

The case remains officially unsolved. Three men charged in 1965 with attacking Reeb and two other ministers on a street corner in Selma, Ala., were acquitted by an all-white jury.

But a four-year NPR investigation, led by Alabama-based reporters Chip Brantley and Andrew Beck Grace, found an eyewitness to the attack who has never spoken publicly about what she saw. She said the three men acquitted in the case — Elmer Cook, William Stanley Hoggle and Namon O'Neal "Duck" Hoggle — were, in fact, the men who attacked Reeb.

That witness, Frances Bowden, also described the participation of another man, William Portwood. In an exclusive interview with NPR, Portwood confirmed his participation in the 1965 assault.

"All I did was kick one of them," Portwood said.

In Kenosha, Wisconsin, after the shooting of yet another black man by the police, protests against police brutality took place.

Jacob Blake, a Black man, was shot seven times in the back by a white Kenosha police officer, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.



During the demonstrations and unrest, Kyle Rittenhouse shot and murdered two people and wounded a third.

All the victims were white. True, none of the victims bore the title of Reverend.

You don't have to be a good person to be murdered and no one should be allowed to play judge, jury, and executioner - even if you think someone deserves to die.

Your personal opinion of someone's character or actions does not give you the right to murder them. Doesn't give anyone the right to murder them.

Kyle Rittenhouse knew nothing about his victims when he gunned them down. He just saw them as other - as BLM and "Antifa". Two boogeymen of the right-wing.


James Earl Ray and Byron De La Beckwith both thought they had the right to play judge, jury, and executioner. As did the Elmer Cook, William Stanley Hoggle, Namon "Duck" Hoggle and William Portwood, the four men who murdered James Reeb, as well as attacking two others.

As did the murderers of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.

As did every white person involved in a lynching - whether actively doing the lynching or happily cheering it on like it was a social event.

As did all the white people who verbally and physically assaulted every black student trying to get an education.

They all thought they had a right to attack, to kill. They all told themselves they were just trying to protect their children or their businesses, their town, or their "way of life".

They all felt justified.

To their warped thinking, it was self-defense.


White allies have died in the cause of Civil Rights - be it about the right the vote, segregation, or police brutality.

That means they died in the fight against racism.

To pretend race has nothing to do with a white ally, or even perceived white ally, dying at the hands of a racist shows a blindness to how racism works and how racists see everyone not them.

If you take the side of racial justice, you are their enemy.

It's not just a case of a white person killing other white people.

It's a case of a racist killing people they see as traitors to the race. Or their "way of life" - however they cloak their racism.