On my office wall is the cover of our March 25, 2010 autographed by Rev. H.K. Matthews. He will be speaking tomorrow at a special event, hosted by the Democratic Women’s Club of Escambia County on the legacy of Selma. It is at The Improv, 375 N. Pace Blvd from 4-7 p.m. Admission is free and open to the public.
Our reporter Ryne Ziemba wrote in March 2010 about the 1974 death that triggered a protest that landed Matthews in jail and convicted of felony extortion for leading the protest. He was eventually pardoned.
Here is Ziemba’s story:
It was on the night of Dec. 20, 1974 when Sheriff’s Deputy Doug Raines pulled over 23-year-old Wendel Sylvester Blackwell after a high-speed chase. Blackwell didn’t comply when first ordered by Raines. However, after Raines bumped his car, Wendel was forced onto the grass on Highway 29.
Raines ordered Blackwell out of the car, and while Blackwell’s hands were on his head, Raines claimed he saw something shiny in the young man’s hand.
In an act that Deputy Raines insisted was self-defense, he shot Blackwell in the head with his .357 magnum, killing him.
However, there appears to have been much more to the story than what Raines initially depicted.
Two witnesses at the scene claimed they never saw Blackwell point a gun at Raines. Also, the gun that was claimed to have been found at the scene was reportedly still being held between Blackwell’s hands and head, even after the jolt of being shot by Raines’ large-caliber gun and subsequently falling to the ground.
Darrel L. Mumford, though not an officer, had been riding in the car with Raines and admittedly tampered with the handgun.
He professed that he moved the gun because he didn’t want Blackwell to use it against someone, even though Blackwell had already been killed.
Rev. H. K. Matthews, head of the Northwest Florida chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) at the time, wrote about the incident extensively in his memoir, “Victory After the Fall.”
He states that the day after the shooting, a woman named Deborah Jones called to speak with him and Rev. B. J. Brooks of the NAACP.
Ms. Jones claimed that she was in the car with Blackwell during the chase and that Raines pulled them over because he saw her get into the car with Blackwell at the Club 400.
Jones told Matthews and Brooks that she and Raines had been lovers in the past, and when the deputy pulled the couple over, Raines was in a jealous rage and pulled her out of the car.
She claimed she got away from Raines, ran from the scene and heard the shots fired by the deputy as she escaped.
Matthews and Brooks never had a chance to further investigate the matter. Excited by what they saw as a key witness in proving foul play in the killing, Matthews and Brooks told several people about Jones’ statement, including Sheriff Royal Untreiner.
Just a few days later, on Dec. 26, 1974, Deborah Jones was found strangled to death under an overpass near Washington High School.
A grand jury was convened in Escambia County by Assistant State Attorney Nathaniel Dedmond to discuss if the killing of Wendel Blackwell was in violation of the law.
Although Gov. Rueben Askew had suggested that Dedmond request a coroner’s inquest, Dedmond had already subpoenaed witnesses for the grand jury. At this time, a coroner’s inquest still included a jury, which made a legally binding decision as to if they should indict a person or not.
The report issued by the grand jury on Jan. 22, 1975 stated that the officer acted in “a reasonably prudent manner; he reasonably believed himself in imminent danger of death or bodily harm created by the said Wendel Sylvester Blackwell who was armed.”
While his friends testified to the grand jury that Blackwell had been in possession of a Derringer handgun that was owned by his friend, Leroy Beasley, the issue of whether or not the gun was in Blackwell’s hand while being detained by Deputy Raines was questionable.
Despite the fact that it was clear that the evidence had been tampered with at the crime scene, the grand jury found no reason to investigate further.
As Matthews wrote in his book, “We simply did not believe that Blackwell had a gun in his hand or that it was lying under his head when he fell. Someone, either Raines or his civilian rider, put it there.”
The African-American community was growing increasingly frustrated with what they believed was a lack of proper investigation of the killing.
Many people in the community were devastated by the grand jury’s findings. Much of the distrust of several grand juries’ verdicts was the result of boiling racial tensions from a number of local incidents.
Less than a month before Blackwell’s murder, on Nov. 30, 1974, five black men from Atlanta were declared missing in the Santa Rosa Sound. Their boat was found the next day under suspicious circumstances, and one of the wives of the missing men received an anonymous tip that the men had been kidnapped.
The bodies eventually surfaced and the cause of death was immediately reported to be accidental, but the claim was later investigated for foul play only after a public outcry by the African-American community and the involvement of the SCLC.
Around the same time, there was also growing racial tension resulting from the fight to rid Escambia High School of the rebel flag, school song (“Dixie”), and mascot (Rebels), which many felt were in bad taste given the school’s recent compulsory integration.
By the time of the grand jury announcement that no legal action would be pursued against Deputy Raines, hundreds from the black community took to the streets in what was one of the largest and most prolonged protests against racial inequality that Pensacola has ever seen.
That Friday, Jan. 24, 1975, an estimated 400 people marched down Palafox Street in downtown Pensacola to the steps of the Escambia County Courthouse. The march even included a hearse in memory of Wendel Blackwell and the event was reportedly demonstrated peacefully.
A casket was carried up the steps of the courthouse as Rev. R. N. Gooden gave a eulogy to the recently departed Blackwell.
Gooden’s eulogy was featured in the Pensacola Journal the next day, quoting “The only thing good about the death of Wendel Blackwell is that he is free now, free from all the oppression and injustice going on in this country. And it is said that the only way a black man can be free is to die. But I tell you, the black people standing on these steps are willing to die for justice.”
Gooden was also reported to have stated that the infamous group Deacons for Defense would patrol the black neighborhoods of Pensacola to protect residents from harm by law enforcement officers.
The tone had now been set for a long stand-off between African-American residents of Pensacola, who felt as though they had been repeatedly denied of any legitimate protection by local authorities and the local legal system, and those from the Sheriff’s Department and other officials who viewed the group as unfounded trouble-makers.
Three weeks of nightly protests followed in front of the Escambia County Sheriff’s headquarters, culminating in an incident that occurred on Feb. 24, 1975.
On that night, a group of protesters, still seeking the termination of Deputy Raines and an investigation into the killing of Blackwell, arrived in carloads to their regular protest site in front of the County Jail.
An apparent regular chant by the crowd, “Two, four, six, eight, who shall we incarcerate? Untreiner, Raines, the whole damn bunch!” was allegedly misheard by Sheriff Untreiner as being “assassinate” instead of “incarcerate.”
Claiming that the group was violating a peaceful assembly law, Untreiner and Deputy Jim Edson, head of the Sheriff’s Riot Squad, ordered the group of several hundred protesters to disperse.
Ninety seconds later, Sheriff Untreiner ordered approximately 70 deputies armed with clubs to disperse the crowd with force.
In the ensuing melee, protesters were beaten and arrested. The total number of arrests was confirmed with 34 adults and 13 juveniles who were ultimately charged with unlawful assembly and malicious trespass.
Three days later, Rev. H. K. Matthews and Rev. B. J. Brooks, supposedly targeted for being leaders of the group, were also charged with felony extortion. The extortion charges were drawn from the same misconception that the leaders had encouraged “assassination” instead of “incarceration.”
At the trial for Matthews and Brooks, another protester, Jimmie Lee Savage, testified that he, not Matthews and Brooks, was the one that always led the chants.
The tape which the accused were alleged to be encouraging the group to “assassinate” was grossly inaudible and from a completely different night of protest.
Using only the testimony of deputies, namely Jim Edson, as their evidence, Matthews and Brooks were convicted of the extortion charges by an all-white jury. Brooks was sentenced to five years probation and Matthews to five years of imprisonment.
After serving 63 days, Matthews and Brooks both received clemency; however, the damage was already inflicted. Due to being blacklisted, Matthews had to move to nearby Alabama.
Matthews and Brooks were eventually pardoned due to a series of revelations that began with the discovery that Deputy Edson, the main witness for the prosecution of the two civil rights leaders, had falsified college transcripts from American University in order to be promoted to supervisor of the Riot Squad. This, in turn, led to a discovery that Edson had stolen cars from the ECSO impound lot.
While he was charged with grand larceny and found guilty, Edson was never charged with perjury against Matthews and Brooks. This was despite the fact that Edson was overheard by a reporter for the St. Petersburg Times during the Blackwell protests boasting that the deputies were going to play a new game at the protests called “Selma.”
“You grab a club and hit a n—-r,” Edson was reported to have said.
“Now, I don’t want you to think I’m a racist. I like black folks. In fact, I’d like to have two of them — to put in my backyard for the dogs to play with. N—-rs are better than milk bones.”