In the early morning quiet of July 13, 1960, in Monroe, Louisiana, the sound of multiple gunshots shattered the peace. When the violence subsided, four Black men were dead or dying, including 24-year-old David Lee Pitts. The brother of David, Albert Pitts Jr., their cousin Earnest McFarland, and another co-worker, Alfred 'Monk' Marshall, also lay slain. A fifth man, Charlie Willis, was grievously wounded but survived.
The men, all employees of a local sanitation company, had gone to the home of their white employer, Robert Fuller, to collect back wages they were owed.
The narrative that quickly solidified in the immediate aftermath was one of self-defense. Fuller claimed to police that the five men arrived at his house armed with knives and that he was forced to shoot them to protect himself. He alleged that he was able to reload his shotgun multiple times as they advanced on him. Based largely on his testimony and that of the injured and intimidated survivor, Charlie Willis, an all-white grand jury declined to indict Fuller for the killings. In a shocking turn of justice, Willis, the lone survivor of the bloody encounter, was the one who initially went to jail.
Decades later, a different and more harrowing version of events would emerge. Willie Mae Pitts Sallie, a sister of David and Albert Pitts, recounted that the survivor, Charlie Willis, later confided in her that they were ambushed the moment they got out of their car. He told her that shots may have even been fired from the windows of Fuller's house before they had a chance to approach. Willis also allegedly confessed to her that Fuller had threatened his life, coercing him into supporting the self-defense story. This account was further bolstered by another witness who told the FBI years later that they had seen one of Fuller's teenage sons emerge from the house with a pistol and shoot some of the men who were already wounded on the ground. It was also suggested that knives were planted on or near the victims to stage the scene.
Despite these later revelations and the work of investigative journalists and cold case projects to bring the truth to light, no one was ever held accountable for the deaths of David Lee Pitts and the other three men. Robert 'Shotgun' Fuller, as he came to be known, leveraged his notoriety from the killings to become a prominent leader in the Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The story of that tragic morning on Ticheli Road serves as a chilling reminder of the racial injustices of the era, where the lives of four men could be taken with impunity.
