On the night of April 9, 1962, Roman Ducksworth Jr., a 27-year-old African-American male, was traveling home to Taylorsville, Mississippi. A corporal in the military police stationed in Maryland, he had been granted emergency leave to be with his wife, who was experiencing complications while giving birth to their sixth child. Exhausted from the long journey, he fell asleep on the final leg of his bus trip.
When the bus arrived in Taylorsville, the driver was unable to wake him and called for the assistance of a local white police officer, William Kelly.
Accounts of the moments that followed vary, but they culminated in a fatal confrontation at the bus station. Some witnesses reported that Officer Kelly boarded the bus and woke Ducksworth by slapping him in the face before escorting him off. An altercation ensued between the two men. Officer Kelly would later claim that Ducksworth struck him and that he responded by hitting Ducksworth on the head with his police club or blackjack. Other witness statements indicated that Ducksworth was merely defending himself against Kelly's aggression. The struggle escalated, and Kelly drew his firearm. He fired one shot into the ground and a second, fatal shot into Roman Ducksworth's chest. Ducksworth died at the scene, never knowing that his wife had just given birth to a healthy baby girl.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Officer William Kelly claimed he acted in self-defense. Just days later, a local grand jury declined to indict him, and the death was ruled a justifiable homicide. No charges were ever filed in the case. The NAACP, the FBI, and the Department of Defense all conducted investigations at the time, but none resulted in legal proceedings against the officer. The case grew cold for decades until it was reopened in 2008 by the FBI under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, a law designed to investigate unsolved civil rights era murders.
The renewed investigation, however, faced significant hurdles. The FBI discovered that the officer, William Kelly, had died in 2004. Furthermore, another Taylorsville police officer who was reportedly a witness to the shooting had also passed away. With the primary suspect deceased and the statute of limitations long expired, the Department of Justice concluded that the case could not be prosecuted. In 2010, the federal government officially closed the file on the death of Roman Ducksworth Jr.
