A black soldier gets a full military funeral – 83 years after his death. Here is his story

A black soldier gets a full military funeral – 83 years after his death. Here is his story

The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project reexamined the killing of a black soldier by military police in 1941. Eight decades later, the U.S. Army corrected the data to reflect that Private Albert King was killed in the line of duty.

Pvt. Albert King was just 19 years old when he was shot by a white military officer at Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1941. For more than 80 years, official military documents have reflected one version of events: that King, who was black, was killed as a result of his own misconduct.

That was more than half a century of official history. That is, until a student and faculty member from Northeastern University’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) re-examined the case and discovered that racism played a role during a confrontation between the Army sergeant and King all those years ago.

With the help of several Morgan Lewis pro bono attorneys, including a 2019 Northeastern School of Law graduate, the Northeastern team successfully petitioned military officials to correct the record, and on March 24, King received a full military funeral – 83 years after his death.

For Micah Q. Jones, a Northeastern law graduate now in Morgan Lewis’s Boston office, it was a case that hit close to home. Jones, an Army captain turned attorney, had worked on numerous pro bono veterans cases since he started working for Morgan Lewis.

“But I had never advocated on behalf of a deceased client in a case that is 83 years old,” he says. “This is certainly a unique case.”

Jones would help draft the petition submitted to the Army Board for Correction of Military Records highlighting the Army’s efforts to cover up the killing, which was based on extensive research by Northeastern graduate Alexa Mills into King and the circumstances of his death. The complete story became the subject of a magazine piece Mills wrote for the Washington Post.

“This case came full circle for me in many ways,” said Jones, who spent nearly two years at Fort Benning (now Fort Moore) while serving in the U.S. Army. Rose Zoltek-Jick, associate professor and associate director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern, was a key player in overseeing Mills’ research, coordinating the legal work and consulting with King’s family. She says it was thanks to former CRRJ member Tasmin Din that she and Mills were able to tap into the company’s resources.

But a problem remained: locating King’s surviving relatives. To do this, Zoltek-Jick and Mills turned to yet another Northeastern graduate: Noah Lapidus, a genealogist who works for Ancestry.

“We found Ms. Helen Russell in Detroit, and she wanted to be our petitioner,” says Zoltek-Jick.

Russell is King’s second cousin. When reached, Russell told Northeastern Global News she was surprised when Mills first contacted her about his story.

“I was like, oh my God, because I didn’t know anything about (King), period,” Russell says.

What followed, she says, was a three-year campaign to clear King’s name. Together, Jones and two other attorneys – in consultation with Zoltek-Jick, Mills and Russell – asked the military board to amend King’s death certificate to reflect an earlier determination that he had died in the line of duty.

The then commanding general of Fort Benning urged base authorities to put the original finding on paper and replace it with another: that King died “while resisting recapture and while assaulting a military officer,” is evident from Mills’ research.

After a mock court-martial trial — the details of which Mills highlighted in her reporting — the officer who killed King, Sgt. Robert Lummus was acquitted and sent to a new post at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

When the board presented the petition, it simply changed course in 2022, acknowledged the injustice and promised to correct the record. There were no oral arguments throughout the process.

“We were all a little surprised by that,” Jones says. “The military decided everything based on our briefing.”

In a statement, an Army spokesperson addressed the issue: “The Army places a high priority on honoring the legacy of all our soldiers and their families, especially when there has been a mistake or injustice, as in the case of Pvt . Albert King.”

“What I saw at the memorial ceremony and in my interactions with the military was that they really appreciated this case, and they really appreciated the opportunity to correct the record,” Jones said. “The mere presence of the base commanding general and the garrison commander at the memorial ceremony showed that the Army truly appreciated this cause.”

Mills, who worked on several Jim Crow-era cold cases during her time at Northeastern, learned about the King case while investigating a lynching that also occurred at Fort Benning in 1941: the unsolved murder of Pvt. Felix Hall, believed to be the country’s first known lynching on a military base. That research was also conducted as part of her work at CRRJ.

In 2021, the Army installed a memorial for Hall.

An Army representative contacted Russell directly to address the error.

“He called me and apologized, and I could feel his emotion,” she says.

“The board had done something it had never done before, which was to correct the record from so long ago and also attribute it to racism,” says Zoltek-Jick. “And once the record was corrected, we decided that the next thing we could or should do for Albert King was to give him the full military funeral he never had.”

The vast majority of CRRJ’s archived cases are researched and developed by Northeastern students. The clinic was first launched in 2007 under the leadership of Margaret Burnham, a lifelong civil rights activist and associate professor of law at Northeastern; The program grew over the years, inviting college-level journalism students to participate in case research alongside law students, Zoltek-Jick says.

Every year, between 50 and 60 cases are handled by law students, journalism students and co-op students, among others. Pro bono lawyers from different firms are often also involved in cases.

Zoltek-Jick says justice would not have been possible without Mills’ “extraordinary commitment” to the case.

“Alexa has been extraordinary in her dedication to the material that has lasted long after graduation,” says Zoltek-Jick. “The reporting that Alexa did merely demonstrates the depth of factual investigation required to make a successful legal claim.”

During the military funeral, Russell received a bronze medal and an American flag. A gravestone for King now reads: “For my beloved cousin I fought the battle.”

“I was happy to be there because I fought for my cousin,” she says.

“There was no one who really remembered his story,” says Zoltek-Jick.

Tanner Stening is a reporter for Northeastern Global News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on X/Twitter @tstening90.