\u201cLord, don\u2019t shoot my boy!\u201d screamed Beatrice Hamilton, 54, to the white man with the gun.<\/span><\/p>\n A second later, she heard a gunshot.<\/span><\/p>\n Her son, Rogers Hamilton, 18, shot in the head at close range, now lay in the dirt on the side of the road a short distance from where she lived.<\/span><\/p>\n The state of Alabama would do a brief investigation at the request of the Lowndes County Sheriff who did not arrest the white men who kidnapped and lynched Hamilton. The Lowndes County District Attorney never filed charges against anyone for the murder.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lowndes County would come to be known as Bloody Lowndes because of all the violence perpetrated against the Black community by white supremacists, especially in the wake of the Brown v. Board decision in 1954, which required schools to desegregate.<\/span><\/p>\n The FBI would open the case for the first time in 2008 and closed it in 2016 after a scant investigation.<\/span><\/p>\n For almost 70 years, Rogers Hamilton\u2019s murder \u2014 who killed him and why \u2014 has been the subject of speculation.<\/span><\/p>\n Through an analysis of news accounts, official government reports, and interviews with family members, Lowndes County residents, criminal justice experts, the motive for Rogers Hamilton\u2019s murder and the men likely involved seem more evident now.<\/span><\/p>\n Shortly after the murder, the Black newspaper The St. Louis Argus<\/i> reported that, \u201cFrom Alabama this week comes a story that has all the earmarks of another Emmett Till case.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Similar to the purported motive for J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant\u2019s murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 in Money, Mississippi, Rogers Hamilton crossed an invisible boundary. It was not a state law. It was a Jim Crow era social norm that would mark him for death by white supremacists.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He\u2019d given a ring to a young Black woman. A white deputy sheriff was also interested in her. The pretext to kill him to get him out of the way? Waving at a white girl.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHe was my favorite, favorite uncle,\u201d says Elizabeth Welch, 75, who grew up in the Hamilton household in a phone interview from her home in Cleveland.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Intersection McCurdy Road & State Highway 97, where Rogers Hamilton waved to the two teen girls.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Rogers Hamilton was the son of Beatrice and Henry Hamilton, a World War I veteran. They resided with their children, several grandchildren and extended family in a sharecropper\u2019s home on McCurdy Road, a long stretch of dirt road off State Highway 97 in between Lowndesboro and Hayneville in Lowndes County, Alabama. Although Rogers Hamilton was among the youngest of their fourteen children, he was the oldest of the children living at their home at that time.<\/span><\/p>\n Rogers Hamilton\u2019s aunt, Maggie Smith, 52, and uncle, Eli Smith, 64, lived nearby with their 16 children and extended family. Several other Black families lived on the McCurdys land and worked as sharecroppers on their dairy farm.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cMy father died in 1955, so he was the man of the house and took care of everybody,\u201d says his younger sister Beatrice Christian, 82, in an interview from her home in Cleveland.<\/span><\/p>\n Rogers Hamilton\u2019s job was to milk cows early in the morning for the McCurdys, recalls his older sister, Jessie Lee Barber, 88, of Birmingham in an interview by phone in March, 2025.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHe was a good boy,\u201d Barber said. \u201cHe didn\u2019t bother anybody.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n According to a Jet<\/i> magazine interview with Beatrice Hamilton, Rogers Hamilton was dating a young Black woman. He had given her a ring and planned to get married at Christmas.<\/span><\/p>\n On Monday, October 21, 1957, Hulda Coleman, 17, drove west of Hayneville on State Highway 97. In the front passenger seat in her car was her close friend and classmate Carolyn Haigler, 17.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This was a regular after school activity for both white teens who were seniors in high school. They\u2019d grown up together in Hayneville. Their grandmothers lived next door to each other and they were related by marriage.<\/span><\/p>\n As they approached McCurdy Road, Rogers Hamilton came into their view.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n All three youths were around the same age, in high school in Hayneville and living in nearby communities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n However, they did not know each other. They attended segregated schools. At that time, Jim Crow segregation was the practice despite the 1954 US Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board.<\/span><\/p>\n Rogers Hamilton waved his arms as if he was attempting to flag down a ride home, roughly a mile away. He\u2019d often caught rides from his employer George McCurdy, Jr., 36, and his employer\u2019s wife Bettie McCurdy, 31.<\/span><\/p>\n Ms. Coleman did not stop the car or slow down to learn why Rogers Hamilton was trying to flag her down. She continued to drive at roughly the speed limit of 40 miles per hour.<\/span><\/p>\n Ms. Haigler didn\u2019t think Rogers Hamilton\u2019s wave was a problem.<\/span><\/p>\n However, Ms. Coleman seemed upset by the wave, says Carolyn (Haiger) Ickenberry, 84, (who later married and changed her last name to Ickenberry) in an interview at her home in North Carolina in February, 2025.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cShe (Hulda Coleman) was shocked that a Black boy would wave at two white girls and try to stop us,\u201d she said. \u201cShe wanted to go tell her father. I remember being really surprised that her reaction was so different from mine.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n At some point, before reaching Lowndesboro, Ms. Coleman turned the car around and started to drive back towards Hayneville.<\/span><\/p>\n Ms. Coleman dropped Ms. Haigler off at her house in Hayneville.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n After dropping off her friend, Ms. Coleman stopped by Holladay\u2019s Store, a local all-in-one grocery store, gas station and garage in Hayneville. She told at least one other person about the encounter,\u00a0 Bettie Wible, a former classmate and freshman at Auburn University.<\/span><\/p>\n Ms. Wible was leaving Holladay\u2019s Store to walk over to see her mother, Olive Wible, 49, who worked as a social worker at the Pensions & Securities Office on the square in Hayneville.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHulda came up in a big hurry in her car, she drove in at an angle and jumped out of the car,\u201d says Bette (Wible) Lewis, 85, (who later married and changed her last name to Lewis), at an interview at her home in Montgomery in March, 2025. \u201cShe was rattled. She was so upset about this Black boy who waved.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Ms. Wible thought that Ms. Coleman was overreacting, and that a young Black man standing by the side of the road could not harm her driving in a car. She went home and told her family about the conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n Rogers Hamilton\u2019s wave was a sign of familiarity to a white girl who did not know him. At that time, it could have been perceived as a threat, says Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Ohio State University professor and author of Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama\u2019s Black Belt<\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In Lowndes County, a perceived threat, intended or not or by mistake, could have severe consequences. The county has had a \u201clong history of violence to police the color line\u201d and that was \u201crigidly enforced\u201d especially if there was a threat to the status quo, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cRogers!\u201d shouted a white man.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It was approximately 1:30 am on October 22, 1957, according to a U.S. DOJ report.<\/span><\/p>\n Two seconds later, the man shouted out Rogers Hamilton\u2019s first name a second time, and then a third time.<\/span><\/p>\n He stood in front of Mrs. Hamilton\u2019s residence next to the green truck. The other white man who drove stayed in the truck with the headlights on.<\/span><\/p>\n Having just awoken, Mrs. Hamilton thought the shout came from her employer, Mr. McCurdy. There would be no other purpose for someone else to be there. Their residence was off the main state highway with no close neighbors nearby.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n McCurdy Road, where Rogers Hamilton was shot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n She woke up her son and told him to go outside to see what Mr. McCurdy needed, according to the statement she made later to investigators.<\/span><\/p>\n Rogers Hamilton was used to rising early before sunrise to milk the McCurdys\u2019 cows, and may have thought he\u2019d overslept and was late for that day\u2019s milking, says Barber.<\/span><\/p>\n He got dressed so quickly that he left his shoes behind and walked out of the front door to talk to the man standing by the green truck. Mrs. Hamilton could not hear the conversation, according to an interview she gave to Jet magazine.<\/span><\/p>\n The man forced Hamilton into the truck and drove away from the family\u2019s residence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cMy mom knew something was wrong,\u201d says Roger Hamilton\u2019s niece Elizabeth Welch. \u201cShe picked her coat off the rack and went running after the truck.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe told her not to go,\u201d says Beatrice Christian, Rogers Hamilton\u2019s older sister.<\/span><\/p>\n Mrs. Hamilton arrived at the scene in time to see one of the men holding a gun to Hamilton\u2019s head.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t shoot my boy!\u201d she shouted.<\/span><\/p>\nRogers Hamilton: A favorite uncle<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n
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<\/source><\/picture>\nThe Pretext for Murder: A Wave<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n
Encounter at Holliday\u2019s Store<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n
Two White Men Kidnap, Lynch<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n
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