Holt McDowell
- This article is about the Jefferson County Sheriff. For his son, the vascular surgeon, see Holt McDowell Jr.
Holt Andrews "Mickey" McDowell (born June 7, 1892 in Tracy City, Tennessee; died December 1, 1963 in Birmingham) was the Sheriff of Jefferson County from 1940 until his death in 1963.
McDowell was the son of Marion and Orpha Holt McDowell of Grundy County, Tennessee. He attended the University of Alabama and played on the football and baseball teams. Between 1913 and 1916 he played baseball in the Southern Association, appearing on the rosters of the Montgomery Rebels/Billikens, Albany Babies, and Mobile Sea Gulls.
McDowell chaired the Jefferson County Democratic Executive Committee and led the local campaign for Governor Frank Dixon in the 1938 election. After the death of Birmingham City Commission president Jimmie Jones, he was considered likely to run for the open seat.
On June 10, 1948 members of the Ku Klux Klan carried out a late-night raid to threaten white Girl Scout leaders against training Black scout leaders at Camp Fletcher. McDowell personally visited the site where no evidence was found and later said that, "It's a good thing it happened." When asked in 1949 about reports that as many as 30 of his 50 deputies were either members of the Klan or sympathetic to its activities, he said that he had never been a Klansman and had no knowledge of any such affiliations among his deputies.
On March 3, 1956 cousins Robert and Billy Dye and Dan Brasher went missing on their way to a party in Robinwood. Persistent lobbying by another cousin, Curtis Brasher, led McDowell to assign Deputy Tom Ellison to the case. Ellison later suggested that McDowell pulled him off the investigation because he came too close to solving it. State investigator O. M. Rains suggested that the Sheriff's department was protecting bootleggers who may have been involved.
He married the former Imogene Wilson. Their son, Holt Jr, became a noted vascular surgeon at UAB.
McDowell died in 1963 and is buried at Elmwood Cemetery.
| Preceded by: Holt McDowell |
Jefferson County Sheriff 1940–1963 |
Succeeded by: Mel Bailey |
References
- "30 KKK 'probers' are Klansmen; 'leak' of police plans aids terrorism." (June 18, 1949) The New York Post, quoted by Hubert Levy in "Antilynching and Protection of Civil Rights, Hearings Before Subcommittee No. 3 of the Committee on the Judiciary, 81st Congress" (1950) Government Printing Office
- Jones, Pam (Fall 2006) "The Brasher-Dye Disappearance". Alabama Heritage, No. 82
External links
- Holt McDowell at Findagrave.com
- 1945 photograph of McDowell in the Alabama Media Group Collection at the Alabama Department of Archives and History