| By Sarah Tiffany | As Isaiah Nixon stared down the barrel of Jim A. Johnson’s gun, his wife yelled, “Fall, Isaiah, fall!”[1] Before he could heed his wife’s advice, three bullets ripped through his stomach and legs. His six children, all younger than 11, watched
| By Mia Kaminsky | Maceo Snipes was a proud veteran who had recently returned home to Taylor County, Georgia, after risking his life fighting for his country in New Guinea during World War II. He thought he deserved to cast his ballot in the Georgia
|By Ashley Bianco| In 1948, thirty miles off U.S. Highway One in the small town of Alston, GA, Alexander Rivera, Jr., a reporter for the Pittsburgh Courier, found himself interviewing the newly widowed Sallie Nixon while disguised in a chauffeur outfit. Sallie’s late husband, Isaiah Nixon,
| By Caroline Wilkerson | Sallie Nixon saw it all. She had been at home that morning when Isaiah left to vote, and she was on the veranda that evening as two white men parked their black two-door sedan in her yard.[1] From the car, Jim
On September 8, 1948, Dover Carter and Isaiah Nixon, two black men from the small town of Alston, Georgia, went to the polls to exercise their right to vote. In an effort to increase black voter turnout, these two black men also transported other black
| By Emily Gaines | Fall, 2015 “He exercised his American right of voting. This type of intimidation aimed at preventing other American citizens from exercising their constitutional rights if permitted to go unpunished will make our constitution a farce.” [1] On September 13, 1948, Thurgood Marshall, special
| By Ellie Studdard | Fall, 2015 On September 13, 1948, the Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters in Washington, D.C., received a copy of a case report from the FBI field office in Atlanta, GA. The report detailed the facts of the assault of Dover V. Carter
| By Hank Klibanoff | The Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project opened its fall 2015 semester with C-SPAN in the classroom, taping the class for its American History TV series, which you can find here. The project ended the semester with a Wall Street Journal article
| By Caela Abrams | As the Georgia sun set on September 8, 1948, twenty-five year old Sallie Nixon was at home on bed rest. She gave birth to her sixth child just a few days prior. She and her husband, Isaiah Nixon, and their children
Isaiah Nixon was shot in his front yard in front of his wife and six children in Alston, Montgomery County, on Sept. 8, 1948, after voting in the Georgia Democratic primary. Two white men, Jim A. Johnson and Johnnie Johnson, arrived at the Nixon home
