Good Morning POU. We continue looking at violence perpetrated upon African Americans during the Jim Crow era that are overlooked in history books and remain unsolved and unprosecuted.
Henry Williams (September 15, 1918 – August 15, 1942) was an African American Private in the United States Army during World War II. He was killed by a bus driver in Mobile, Alabama on August 15, 1942.
Williams was born on September 15, 1918, in Macon, Mississippi. He enlisted in the Army on September 23, 1941, and was initially stationed at Fort McClellan in Alabama.
At the time of his death, Williams was 23 years old and stationed at Brookley Army Air Field, near Mobile. When the bus driver stopped to talk to a friend, Henry Williams quite innocently said to the bus driver, are we planning to move on, and said to him, I’ve got a curfew to make. So enraged was the bus driver that he chased Henry Williams, who was carrying his laundry, which he had done in town, off the bus, shot him and killed him. Chandler fired multiple shots, striking Williams in the back of the head.
In reaction to Williams’ death, more than 100 people joined the Mobile branch of the NAACP. Local NAACP president John L. LeFlore began a bus boycott and called for prosecution of Chandler. The Mobile Light and Railroad Company agreed to disarm bus drivers, but Chandler only spent a few days in jail. He was charged with murder and released on $3,500 bond, but never prosecuted. The commanding officer at Brookley Field, Colonel Vincent Dixon, stated that the Army could not prosecute a civilian crime off base.
Henry Williams’ death was mentioned on episode 3 of the 2007 PBS miniseries The War.