Efforts by the White Power Structure in Alabama to Imprison Donald Watkins Began in July 50 Years Ago
- Donald V. Watkins
- 6 hours ago
- 3 min read
By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted on July 1, 2026
My name is Donald V. Watkins. This is a true story.
On July 14, 1976, a Montgomery County, Alabama grand jury cleared me of allegations that I threatened and bribed two Montgomery police officers to be witnesses for me in the Bernard Whitehurst federal court case. It was the first time the White power structure in Alabama tried to imprison me on trumped-up criminal charges.
In December 1975, I represented the Estate of Bernard Whitehurst in a wrongful death case against the Montgomery police department. Whitehurst was an unarmed black man who was fatally shot by Montgomery police officer Donnie Foster.
The police initially claimed that Whitehurst was a fleeing felon who shot at Foster while on the run. My investigation, which included exhuming Whitehurst’s body, revealed that Whitehurst was shot in the back, and that the gun found beside his body was “planted” by police after his death.
The Whitehurst case evolved into a nationally recognized scandal that resulted in the resignations of Montgomery’s mayor and police commissioner, the indictment of three police officers, and the firing or resignation of eight others. During this period, the Whitehurst case also grew into the largest police scandal in Alabama’s history.
This scandal was headlined in the April 3, 1977, edition of the Washington Post as "Alabama’s 'Watergate'." More recently, this shooting was featured in a December 19, 2015, edition of the New York Daily News in an article titled, “Innocent Alabama man murdered by cops 40 years ago, police officers were heard saying 'We done shot the wrong nigger'."
In April 2013, the city of Montgomery erected a marker at police headquarters formally acknowledging that:
“Whitehurst, 32, did not match the robbery suspect’s description; that he was unarmed, despite police claims that they returned fire after being fired upon; that the gun found by his body had been confiscated by police in a drug investigation a year earlier, and was placed at the scene as part of a police cover-up."
In 2015, the city erected a second marker bearing the same language on the street where Whitehurst was killed.
The effort to imprison me for my work in the Whitehurst case was the first of many attempts by the state's White power structure to jail me for aggressively advancing and protecting the civil rights of Blacks in Alabama. Every landmark case I handled during my legal career in Alabama was accompanied by a law enforcement effort to kill me, jail me, or harm my children.
Throughout my legal career, I was hauled in front of numerous grand juries by state and federal prosecutors in Alabama who were notorious for their use of the N-word in private conversations and their participation in COINTELPRO-style law enforcement activities. I maintained my innocence throughout each ordeal.
Unlike Donald Trump, I have testified in every administrative, regulatory, grand jury, and judicial proceeding related to each and every bogus "Lawfare" charge leveled against me during my career, without ever invoking my Fifth Amendment rights. Furthermore, I have never been charged with tax evasion, accounting fraud, or perjury.
When I left the Montgomery city council in 1983 to serve as Mayor Richard Arrington. Jr., Special Counsel in Birmingham, Alabama, ultra-conservative Montgomery Mayor Emory Folmar told the city council and the Washington Post that my departure from the council was "one of the greatest blessings since the Yankee troops went home in 1870.” I fully understood what Folmar meant by his statement.
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