Margaret Ann Knott died protesting for civil rights. No one was indicted.

“I died for freedom.”

Margaret Ann Knott, a 19-year-old Black woman, said those words to Willie Jackson, a fellow protester, on the afternoon of a September 11, 1971, sit-in demonstration, where protesters blocked the intersections around the courthouse in the town of Butler, the county seat of Choctaw County, Alabama.

Gladden Smith, 28, a white U.S. Department of Agriculture employee on his way home from work, had struck Knott with his car moments before she said those words. However, accounts differed about the circumstances of the collision.

Knott died at Choctaw County Hospital that same afternoon.

Until Knott’s death, the county’s all-white leadership refused to meet with civil rights movement leaders to discuss their demands for greater representation in the county. The demands had fueled daily protests over the previous three months. Although Black people made up 43 percent of the 16,500 county residents, they were not represented in county government.

After Knott’s death, the pressure mounted. National civil rights leaders from the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Conference joined the ranks of the protesters.

Ultimately, Choctaw County’s leadership sat down with the Concerned Black Citizens of Choctaw County, an SCLC affiliate led by Anthony S. “Tony” Butler, and agreed to meet most of its demands.

“It did turn the tide in Choctaw County after her death,” Vrita Delaine, 73, Knott’s first cousin, said. “It took something that tragic to start to see changes.”

A county grand jury declined to indict Smith on a murder charge, and the U.S. Department of Justice said in its 1971 investigation that it lacked the evidence to prosecute Smith under federal civil rights law.

Nearly five decades later, the Justice Department reopened the case in 2019, but closed it in 2024 for the same reason and because the federal statute of limitations had expired.

Even though no one was indicted for Knott’s death, Knott’s family, friends and community members gathered in September in Butler, as they do every year, for a memorial scholarship service in her honor.

Just before attendees left the event this fall, Willie Jackson, 76, stood up and said that he had been right next to Knott when Smith’s car struck her. He recalled that she told him, “I died for freedom,” an account he gave to the FBI in 1971 and 2022.

Double first cousins

“We were double first cousins,” Delaine, who was Vrita Harrison at the time, said about growing up with her sister, Vickie, and their first cousins, twins Margaret Ann and Mary Ann Knott, in a recent interview.

Knott’s mother, Carrie Johnson, who was born Carrie Harrison, and Delaine’s father, Ezekiel Harrison, were siblings. Knott’s father, Lincoln Knott, and Delaine’s mother, Emma Harrison, who was born Emma Knott, were siblings. Carrie took the surname Johnson when she remarried.

“There’s nobody in the world that I’m related to that Margaret was not related to,” Delaine said.

The cousins grew up in Yantley, a close-knit Black community in Choctaw County located 17 miles northwest of the town of Butler. They were always at each other’s houses and attended school together, Delaine said.

Their families, along with the cousins, were active in the civil rights movement. The four cousins were among the first students to integrate county schools under the voluntary freedom of choice plan in the 1960s.

They were extremely close, the best of friends, and grew up more like sisters than cousins, Delaine said.

The cousins even shared the mumps.

“I remember all of us having the mumps together,” Delaine said. “And of course, you know, it was like, it hurts, but it’s OK because we’re together.”

The cousins shared their dreams with each other and planned what they’d wear at each other’s weddings. And they talked about what they were going to do when they grew up, even committing to sing or speak at each other’s funerals.

“Margaret had made me a promise that if I died, she was going to sing,” Delaine said. “I had promised her that if something happened to her before me, I would speak at her funeral. And I did. I kept my promise.”

The movement

Choctaw County schools had been under federal supervision for the previous five years in United States v. Choctaw County Board of Education. As efforts to desegregate the county’s schools moved forward in 1971, the county fired nine Black teachers, according to The Meridian Star.

Knott’s mother, Carrie Johnson, was reportedly among the fired teachers. However, an education official said that Johnson had not been fired but was on maternity leave, according to a news report.

Civil rights leader Tony Butler initiated and organized direct actions protesting the teacher firings. A World War II veteran, educator and funeral home owner and operator, he led the Concerned Black Citizens of Choctaw County in calling for the rehiring of the fired Black teachers. He also urged representation for Black people in the county’s leadership and government staff, in law enforcement and in the downtown stores. He later became mayor of Lisman, a town seven miles northwest of the town of Butler, and died in 1996.

Throughout the summer of 1971, civil rights protests organized by Tony Butler drew hundreds, mostly students, including Knott and Delaine along with their families.

Activists gathered at local churches, such as the AME Zion Church in the town of Butler, for mass meetings on Monday nights at 7 p.m., according to Yvonne Williams, then Yvonne Mosely. Previously a student of both Tony Butler and Johnson during elementary and middle school, Williams was a 16-year-old student at Lisman High School in 1971.

“We wanted to be part of change,” Williams said. “Equal rights is what we wanted.”

Before the daily protests and marches into the town of Butler and during breaks, adult volunteers provided water, soft drinks and sandwiches to the students, Williams said.

Students made and carried signs, such as “Stop Segregation,” “Equal Rights” and “Justice for All,” Williams recalled.

While marching, students sang freedom songs, including “We Shall Overcome” and “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize,” and improvised new verses to “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around” about Choctaw County Sheriff Leon Clark.

“‘Leon Clark is a Dirty Rat … Gonna get caught by the Freedom Cat’ was a made-up verse that was added to the song,” Williams said.

When county schools were set to start for the fall term, Tony Butler organized another protest, a student strike in which over 90 percent of Black students, including Williams, stopped attending classes throughout the county, according to The New York Times.

A review of the local newspaper, The Choctaw Advocate, showed that it hadn’t covered the strike or the civil rights movement’s daily demonstrations and economic boycott of the downtown stores over the previous summer.

The county’s leadership continued to refuse meetings with Black leaders to discuss their demands.

Collision

Tragedy struck on September 11, 1971, when Gladden Smith left his office at the corner of South Hamburg Avenue and Church Street in downtown Butler and drove his beige 1964 Chevrolet into an intersection that civil rights protesters had blocked near the courthouse. At 1 p.m., Smith’s car struck Knott at the intersection of Pushmataha Street and Mulberry Avenue.

Delaine was not at the demonstration with Knott that day because she was at another protest across town.

When Mamie Glover, a civil rights movement activist, then 33, approached the courthouse with several others, the four intersections around the courthouse were blocked off, Glover, 88, said in an interview at her home in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

“I looked down on the courthouse lawn and this car comes speeding … He couldn’t go unless he ran over somebody,” Glover recalled. “I’ll never forget it.”

Willie Jackson, who was next to Knott when she was struck, told the FBI in 1971 that he stood up when he saw the car coming toward him and other protesters at about 25 to 30 mph. Jackson said to the FBI that Knott had not been able to get out of the way before the car hit her in the back and that he saw other protesters beat on Smith’s car trying to get it off Knott and then Smith “gunned it.” He told the same story to the FBI in 2022. Jackson, who spoke at the September 13 event, did not respond to later requests for an interview.

Other protesters gave the FBI similar accounts. They saw Smith’s car hit Knott and then they saw protesters attempt to push Smith’s car back so that Knott could move out from under the car. They told the FBI that Smith responded by stepping on the gas. His car surged forward, rose up and came down on Knott, crushing her under the car, and then Smith sped away, they said.

However, some witnesses, mostly white and many who knew Smith, told the FBI that protesters surrounded Smith’s car, beat on the doors and tried to pull Smith out of the car, according to a Justice Department report. They said Smith tried to evade protesters by accelerating the car and that was when Smith ran over Knott.

In a statement that he later gave to the FBI, Smith said he feared for his life when protesters surrounded his car and beat on the doors. Smith said that he accelerated the car to get out of the intersection as fast as he could. Smith’s statement indicated that he didn’t realize that he’d hit Knott until afterward.

Smith, now 83, could not be reached for comment despite multiple telephone calls.

At the Choctaw County Hospital emergency room, medical staff treated Knott, who had suffered multiple fractures. While at the hospital, Knott experienced a fat embolism, according to her death certificate, a condition that blocks blood flow. Medical staff tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate her, and she died at 2 p.m., according to a Justice Department report.

The records conflict on the cause of Knott’s death. Her death certificate stated that the injury occurred because she was hit by an automobile and that the cause of death was a fat embolism.

However, the state’s toxicologist, Nelson Grubbs, determined in his autopsy that Knott died of a ruptured spleen, according to a Justice Department report.

After the incident, protesters tracked down the sheriff to urge him to find the driver, whom they could identify only by his Chevrolet and his license plate number.

Clark determined who the driver was and sent sheriff’s deputies to Smith’s house to arrest him on a murder charge.

Choctaw County Circuit Judge William G. Lindsey set a $5,000 bond for Smith, and Clark released him.

Aftermath

On Sunday, September 12, an estimated 450 to 500 people gathered and marched silently through downtown Butler. The marchers stopped to pray and continued to walk around the county courthouse. They prayed again and then returned to the church, according to a UPI news report.

Although the march was peaceful, Governor George Wallace called up 150 members of the Alabama National Guard to active duty and sent them along with 52 Alabama state troopers to patrol the streets.

County and town officials sought a temporary injunction to stop the protests. Lindsey granted the injunction against the SCLC and the Concerned Black Citizens of Choctaw County.

Despite the injunction, students held demonstrations on September 13 at their schools in the towns of Butler and Lisman.

“We would ride the bus to school, but instead of going to class, we all sat in the gym,” Williams said.

County officials told the students that their gatherings were in violation of the injunction and requested that the students disperse.

Sheriff’s deputies arrested 165 people, mostly students, who had not dispersed, according to UPI news reports. Sheriff’s deputies transported the students to the National Guard Armory, where officials held juvenile hearings and photographed and fingerprinted youths.

“The National Guard surrounded us with guns, weapons … It was very frightening,” said Williams, who’d been arrested.

A judge set bond at $200 per charge for the adults, $100 for youths 14 and over, and no bond amount for youths under 14. Sheriff’s deputies transported the adult demonstrators and 10 youths who’d refused bail to local jails in Sumter, Marengo and Washington counties, according to The Meridian Star.

“We were six people to a cell,” said Williams about her detention at the Washington County Jail in Chatom. “We were there for a week.”

Funeral

The funeral began September 14 at the AME Zion Church in downtown Butler. Led by the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, the SCLC president, and Knott’s twin, Mary Ann Knott, an estimated 2,500 mourners walked behind a casket carried on a mule-drawn wagon. A judge temporarily lifted the injunction to allow the procession to move through town.

The procession went by Smith’s home and stopped at the location where Knott was struck, and Abernathy kissed the ground. The cortege continued out of town, where attendants placed the casket in a hearse. Attendees got in their cars and followed the hearse 17 miles northwest to Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Yantley.

The youngest speaker at the funeral services and the only woman, Delaine delivered on her commitment to her first cousin, having crafted the tribute herself.

“They denied her the rights for which she died,” Delaine said, according to a recording preserved in the SCLC records at Emory University. “Continue the struggle for justice and freedom,” she said.

After Delaine spoke, Abernathy gave the eulogy for more than half an hour.

“Who killed Margaret? Was it an automobile?” Abernathy asked. “Prejudice killed Margaret! Racism killed Margaret!”

After remarks by Tony Butler and the Rev. James Orange of the SCLC, the services concluded with Knott’s burial at the church’s cemetery, followed by gatherings of Knott’s family and friends.

Arrests

On September 15, sheriff’s deputies arrested 40 Choctaw High School students who did not attend class.

Later that morning, several hundred people convened with Abernathy at Bethel Baptist Church in downtown Butler. As they left the church and headed toward the Choctaw County Courthouse, Clark warned them that they had violated the injunction.

The marchers ignored Clark and did not disperse.

Clark ordered his deputies to arrest the marchers. Deputies arrested 160 people and took them on school buses to jail.

Deputies placed Abernathy and the Rev. Lewis Lloyd Anderson of Selma in the Choctaw County Jail, and took the other individuals to Thomaston Prison Camp in Marengo County.

Although the governor released the Alabama National Guard from active duty that afternoon, Alabama state troopers remained in town.

Agreement

Knott’s death made the front page of The Choctaw Advocate’s September 16 edition, the first time in three months that the newspaper had covered the civil rights movement.

County officials met with Tony Butler and other Black community leaders at the Hayden and Butler funeral home that he owned and operated along with his wife, Elizabeth Hayden Butler, and his mother-in-law, Louisa Johnson Hayden, in Lisman. Two federal mediators from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service joined the talks.

Seven miles away, Abernathy remained at the Choctaw County Jail, refusing to post bail until the county’s leadership reached an agreement with the Concerned Black Citizens of Choctaw County.

Outside the jail, dozens of people protested. Clark arrested 48 people involved in the protest, according to press reports.

Since the start of the week, the sheriff’s office had arrested more than 400 people, according to The Meridian Star.

In the late afternoon on Saturday, September 18, county officials agreed to the vast majority of the Black community’s demands, including restoring several Black teachers to their jobs, dropping the charges against Black demonstrators, and increasing Black representation in government and downtown stores.

With most of the movement’s demands agreed to, Abernathy posted bail and then departed.

No indictment

Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley appointed attorney Tom Young Sr. to handle the grand jury in Knott’s case because Choctaw County’s district attorney, Hardie Kimbrough, was ill.

More than four dozen people were summoned before the 18-member grand jury, which had 12 white and six Black jurors. About 30 witnesses presented testimony, according to a Justice Department report.

The grand jury met for two days and declined to indict Smith. It released its decision to the public on September 23.

The FBI conducted an investigation into Knott’s death, interviewing 65 witnesses, and wrapped up its brief investigation in October. The Justice Department recommended against prosecution, citing a lack of evidence of a violation of federal civil rights law, according to a Justice Department report.

Almost 50 years later, the Justice Department reopened Knott’s case in 2019 under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Reauthorization Act of 2016. The department closed Knott’s case in 2024, determining that “the available evidence is insufficient to prove [Smith] willfully intended to use his car to interfere with the protesters and strike Knott.” It concluded that even with sufficient evidence, it could not prosecute because the federal five-year statute of limitations had expired, according to a Justice Department report.

Legacy

Knott’s family and friends have remembered and honored her in the 55 years since she was killed.

Knott’s mother, Carrie Johnson, forgave Smith because she didn’t think his actions were deliberate, according to a 2014 Associated Press article. Johnson died in 2018. Knott’s twin, Mary Ann Knott, died in 2020.

Although efforts by Johnson to site a memorial near the courthouse where Knott was struck stalled, Choctaw County officials dedicated the Margaret Ann Knott Memorial Bridge on County Road 45 in Yantley in 2019.

“It’s taken almost a lifetime for them to do memorials in her honor,” Williams said.

Johnson started a scholarship fund in the mid-1970s in her daughter’s honor to help high school seniors pay for college expenses. Late in her life, Johnson asked a friend and member of her church, Tracy Pringle, 56, to carry on the fund, Pringle said.

“We are able to give back to deserving seniors,” Pringle said.

Since the launch of the scholarship, family, friends and community members have gathered in mid-September to honor Knott at a memorial scholarship fund service. This year’s event was held September 13 at Morning Star Baptist Church on Alabama 17 on the outskirts of Butler.

At the service, faith leaders spoke of Knott’s sacrifice. The Greene County Community Choir led the congregation in song. Attendees at the packed service donated to the memorial scholarship fund.

“Margaret Ann Knott’s legacy is a hand of support across generations. This is a blessing with a purpose. Don’t give up,” said the Rev. Dr. Al Smith, pastor of Morning Star Baptist Church, who presided over the church service. He is not related to Gladden Smith.

Delaine recalled her cousin’s impact on her life in a recent interview at her home in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

“‘Don’t let this stop you,’” Delaine recalled her father, Ezekiel Harrison, telling her days after the collision. “‘If you let it stop you, you haven’t paid homage to Margaret, you haven’t done what you could to really give respect to the kind of person she was, and to the life that she could have lived, had she lived.’”

Delaine’s father’s advice encouraged her to return to Livingston University, now the University of West Alabama, to continue classes and to earn an undergraduate degree, Delaine said.

“That was probably the best advice he could have given me,” Delaine said.

Delaine went on to earn a master of science in continuing education degree, later working as the associate dean of students and then as the assistant vice president for student affairs at the University of Southern Mississippi.

“I spent all those years working, just trying to build a community of openness, of acceptance, of people coming together, working together and just looking at each other with love and respect,” Delaine said. “It came from my hurt feelings of what had happened to my cousin.”