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Civil Rights Era · Law

Lucius Amerson

1933 – 1994

Korean War paratrooper elected sheriff of Macon County, Alabama, in 1966; widely recognized as the first Black sheriff in the South since Reconstruction.

Lucius Amerson was a thirty-two-year-old Army veteran and postal clerk when Black voters in Macon County, Alabama, newly protected by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, elected him sheriff. Sworn in in January 1967, he is widely recognized as the first Black sheriff in the South since Reconstruction. He held the office for twenty years, in a county where a sheriff’s badge had for generations been an instrument of white control, and his election became one of the clearest early measures of what the ballot could change.

At a Glance

Born
7 October 1933, Clinton, Greene County, Alabama
Died
15 March 1994, Tuskegee, Alabama
Birth name
Lucius Davenport Amerson
Known for
Election as sheriff of Macon County, Alabama (8 November 1966); five terms in office (1967–1987); acquittal in a federal civil rights prosecution (1971)
Fields
Law · Politics · Civil Rights
Era
Civil Rights Era

Early Life

Lucius Davenport Amerson was born on 7 October 1933 in Clinton, in Greene County, in the western Alabama Black Belt, to Henry and Lewinie Amerson, who farmed. He grew up in a county where Black residents were the majority of the population and almost entirely excluded from the vote by the poll tax, literacy tests, and the discretion of white registrars.

Amerson served in the United States Army as a paratrooper during the Korean War. After his discharge he settled in Macon County, in east-central Alabama, and took a job as a postal clerk, commuting to work in Montgomery. Macon County was home to Tuskegee Institute and to one of the best-organized Black voting-rights movements in the state. In 1960 its residents had won Gomillion v. Lightfoot, in which the Supreme Court of the United States struck down a 1957 state law that redrew the boundaries of the city of Tuskegee to remove nearly all of its Black voters.

Life and Work

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 sent federal examiners into the Alabama Black Belt and swept away the literacy test. Within a year, Black voters in Macon County, a large majority of its population, were positioned to decide county elections. The killing of Samuel Younge Jr., a Tuskegee Institute student and civil rights worker shot dead at a Tuskegee gas station on 3 January 1966 after asking to use a whites-only restroom, sharpened the stakes. Who wore the sheriff’s badge determined who would be arrested, who would be protected, and whose violence would go unanswered.

In 1966 Amerson entered the Democratic primary for sheriff against the white incumbent, Harvey Sadler. Tuskegee Institute students canvassed rural Macon County on his behalf, as they did for the civil rights attorney Fred Gray, who was running for the state legislature. In the primary on 3 May Amerson finished narrowly ahead of Sadler, forcing a runoff. On 31 May he won the runoff with about fifty-three percent of the vote. Sadler then mounted a write-in campaign for the general election; on 8 November 1966 Amerson defeated it. Time described him that month as “a Korean War paratrooper and former postal clerk who became the South’s only Negro sheriff.”

The election made national news. Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey sent a congratulatory telegram, and Amerson was invited to the White House to meet President Lyndon B. Johnson. In January 1967 Probate Judge Preston Hornsby administered the oath of office to Amerson and his first deputies, two Black officers, Eddie M. Ivory and Joseph Merriwether, and a white officer, Arthur L. Knowles. The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund reports that Amerson pledged “fair and impartial law enforcement for black and white alike” and told the Southern Christian Leadership Conference that he had run to “protect and not oppress.”

The work was dangerous. On one occasion his patrol car crashed and burned while he chased a stolen vehicle down a rural road. In August 1970 a prisoner in the county jail broke loose, seized pistols, and barricaded himself inside, firing and threatening to shoot, until officers used tear gas to end the standoff. The prisoner alleged that Amerson and his chief deputy, Richard Coleman Jr., beat him once he was subdued, and in 1971 a federal grand jury indicted both men for violating his civil rights. Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley, who later said a conviction of the state’s first Black sheriff would have been “a huge setback” for efforts to integrate law enforcement, defended them personally. In May 1971 a jury in federal court in Opelika, before Judge Robert Varner, acquitted both men.

Amerson won re-election in 1970, defeating Sadler again, and in 1974, 1978, and 1982. In July 1977 a grand jury indicted him on charges of submitting a false voucher for the purchase of gasoline and of freeing an inmate convicted of assault and battery, and criticized his office over the county’s crime rate. He remained in office and was returned to a fourth term the following year. He left office in 1987 after twenty years as sheriff.

Legacy

After leaving office Amerson suffered a heart attack in 1991, and at the time of his death he was working to open a restaurant in Tuskegee. He died there on 15 March 1994, at sixty, and was buried in the cemetery of St. John Baptist Church in Boligee, in his native Greene County.

His son Anthony E. Amerson later donated his badges, uniform shirts, papers, and the fire-scarred revolver from the patrol-car crash to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, and his career is featured at the National Law Enforcement Museum in Washington, D.C. In February 2020 the museum’s program “Witness: Rising in the Ranks” honored him alongside a new generation of Black sheriffs, including Andre Brunson of Macon County. That May the Alabama Legislature named a stretch of U.S. Highway 29 South in Tuskegee the Lucius D. Amerson Memorial Highway, recognizing him as the first African American sheriff elected in the Deep South after Reconstruction.

Amerson’s significance lies less in any single case than in the office itself. Across the Black Belt, sheriffs had enforced segregation, broken up voter-registration drives, and stood by as violence went unpunished. His election showed that the Voting Rights Act could reach beyond the ballot box into the daily administration of justice, and his twenty years in office opened the way for the Black sheriffs who followed across the South.

For Educators

Lucius Amerson’s election as sheriff of Macon County in 1966 shows how the Voting Rights Act changed not only who could vote, but who held the local power to arrest, protect, and enforce the law. Open the classroom lesson →

Key Dates

  1. 7 October 1933 Born in Clinton, Greene County, Alabama.
  2. 1950s Serves as a U.S. Army paratrooper during the Korean War; later works as a postal clerk.
  3. 6 August 1965 The Voting Rights Act becomes law, opening registration to Black voters in Macon County.
  4. 31 May 1966 Wins the Democratic runoff for Macon County sheriff over incumbent Harvey Sadler.
  5. 8 November 1966 Elected sheriff of Macon County, defeating Sadler’s write-in campaign.
  6. January 1967 Sworn in as sheriff by Probate Judge Preston Hornsby.
  7. May 1971 Acquitted, with his chief deputy, of federal civil rights charges in Opelika, Alabama.
  8. 1987 Leaves office after five terms and twenty years as sheriff.
  9. 15 March 1994 Dies in Tuskegee, Alabama.
  10. 5 May 2020 The Alabama Legislature names the Lucius D. Amerson Memorial Highway in Tuskegee.

Sources and Further Reading

  1. Encyclopedia of Alabama, “Lucius Amerson and Deputies Sworn In” (photograph by Jim Peppler, Southern Courier, Alabama Department of Archives and History). Link
  2. “The South: From Toehold to Foothold,” Time, 18 November 1966. Link
  3. Jo Freeman, “The 1966 Macon County, Alabama, Campaign.” Link
  4. National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, “The First Black Sheriff since Reconstruction.” Link
  5. Michael E. Ruane, “Sheriff Made History Simply by Doing His Job,” Washington Post, 14 August 2008. Link
  6. U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, Oral History Project, interview of William J. Baxley II by George W. Royer Jr., 7 March 2016. Link
  7. “Black Ala. Sheriff Indicted,” Washington Post, 31 July 1977. Link
  8. Alabama Legislature, House Joint Resolution 48 (2020 Regular Session), naming the Lucius D. Amerson Memorial Highway. Link
  9. WSFA 12 News, “History-making Alabama sheriff to be honored in Washington, D.C.,” 13 February 2020. Link
  10. Equal Justice Initiative, “Samuel Younge Jr.” (A History of Racial Injustice). Link
  11. Oyez, Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339 (1960). Link

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By the Black-History.com editors. Last reviewed 30 September 2026. To suggest a primary source or a correction, write to editors@black-history.com or use our corrections form.

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