Content area
Full Text
Heflin boasted that the shooting of a drunken Negro was one of the highlights of his political career.
Alabama has a long list of politicians who made their careers on race. But Alabama's most virulent Negro hater was U.S. congressman and senator James Thomas Heflin. Known as Cotton Tom, Heflin represented Alabama's Fifth Congressional District, the site of Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute.
A century ago, when Heflin was serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, Cotton Tom hopped on a streetcar at Pennsylvania Avenue and Twelfth Street in Washington, D. C. A black man named Lewis Lumby was sitting in the car, drinking whisky from an open bottle. Heflin, a prohibitionist and teetotaler, decided to protest this unbecoming behavior by shooting the black man. The bullet hit the black man just above the right ear. The Negro was seriously wounded but survived. Heflin was arrested on charges of assault with intent to kill. But...