Hall’s lynching initially prompted a burst of publicity around the country. The public, both blacks and whites, wrote countless letters and petitions to the government demanding justice and information about his killing. But over the following months and years, the government released only a fraction of its findings. Even today, the FBI continues to redact a key part of the 75-year-old report.
In 2014, Northeastern University Law School’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, which seeks to uncover details of racially motivated murders during the Jim Crow era, began digging up documents on Hall’s case. Those documents were turned over to Northeastern’s School of Journalism, prompting a year-long investigation into the lynching and the government’s failure to see justice done. This article is based on the FBI file, a separate War Department report and correspondence, a 500-page file maintained by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other government records, as well as a range of archival documents and interviews with people who were at Fort Benning at the time of Hall’s death or otherwise knew him, and their descendants.
Seventy-five years after Hall’s life was cut short, Americans are wrestling again with questions about the value placed on the lives of young black men and the ability of the criminal justice system to transcend its historic double standard. Hall’s case may be cold, but it still resonates.
Hall was born on New Year’s Day 1922 in Millbrook, Ala., a rural town 11 miles north of Montgomery. His mother died of tuberculosis a week before his third birthday. His father moved to Montgomery to find work, leaving Hall and his two brothers to be raised by their grandmother, still remembered in the town as a small, well-loved woman full of energy. Hall’s family and friends nicknamed him “Poss.”
When he was a teenager, Hall watched his older cousins enlist in the military and leave town to train for war. The only work available to black teenagers in Millbrook was picking cotton.
Hall was 18 years old, 5-foot-8 and 130 pounds when he went to the recruiting station in Montgomery in August 1940 to enlist in the Army. He was assigned to Fort Benning in neighboring Georgia, where he would join the 24th Infantry Regiment, one of the first all-black military units, organized after the Civil War.
By all accounts, Hall loved those initial months away from home. He seemed happy in the Army and swept up with his social life. In his journal, he kept a list of every girl he was sweet on. Florence Cotton lived at 742 North McDonough Street, Montgomery. Cordelia Huffman lived at 52 Chilton Street. On one page, he declared his love for Miss Ada Mae.
Sometimes he met girls out on the town. He liked to go to a bar and get a drink in the evening, but he was never seen drunk. He liked to make conversation with everybody, white or black.
Finding Mr. Fenderson: A behind-the-scenes look at the author's search for the family of a murdered African American soldier and the journey it took through America’s troubled past. Read the back story here.
Months after Hall disappeared, the FBI interviewed Sgt. Frank O. Williams, who had trained Hall, and reported his impressions: “WILLIAMS stated that he was very familiar with [Hall’s] habits, and considered him an all right individual; that he had no trouble with him during training, and that his discipline was good, although at times HALL seemed to be more of a kid than a soldier, as he was usually playing pranks on others, and almost always in a very jovial mood. Sergeant WILLIAMS knew of no trouble in which HALL had been involved, and knew no one that disliked [the] victim.”
Hall went home to Alabama for Christmas in 1940. He turned 19 on Jan. 1. One week later, he had a routine physical exam at Fort Benning. He had grown half an inch and gained 15 pounds in the five months since enlisting.
On Jan. 31 he made his first and only payment, 65 cents, on a life insurance policy. He named his grandmother as the beneficiary.
On Feb. 12, he went to work as usual at the sawmill, where he was detailed by the Army, assigned to keep the fire burning. When the shift ended, he told two friends he was heading to the post exchange — the only one for blacks on the segregated base — where he could order a hot meal and eat it at the counter.
