Five mornings a week police officers pin a bull’s-eye to their uniform’s shirt. Here are the stories of two men who pinned on their badge for the last time a century apart.
Christopher Columbus Fitzgerald
Christopher Columbus Fitzgerald was born in Georgia about 1848 to Asa and Mary Fitzgerald. The census lists him as “Columbus Fitzgerald.”
By 1864 the Fitzgeralds were in Fort Worth. Registering to vote in 1869, Fitzgerald listed himself as “Christopher C. Fitzgerald.” He said he had lived in Fort Worth five years. Also in 1869 Fitzgerald lent a pistol to James Creswell. Creswell used that pistol to kill his father-in-law, Lemuel Edwards.
Fitzgerald’s father, Asa N. Fitzgerald, was a preacher, a prospector, and a frequent litigant in lawsuits. He was also, Fort Worth historian Dr. Richard F. Selcer and retired police sergeant and historian Kevin S. Foster write in their Written in Blood: The History of Fort Worth’s Fallen Lawmen, a “confirmed bigot” who passed his bigotry on to his son.
In 1873 father Fitzgerald, along with Sam Evans and David (“Tuck”) Boaz, was charged with violating the “ku klux bill,” which probably refers to the Enforcement Act of 1871, known as the “Ku Klux Klan Act,” which made federal offenses of a number of the Klan’s intimidation tactics. The Fort Worth Democrat’s reference to the act as a “damnable piece of tyranny” pretty much sets the tone for what was to follow.
By 1874 son C. C. had been appointed a deputy city marshal in Fort Worth and soon had run-ins with the town’s African-American population. Note the tone of the Democrat’s reporting.
Late in 1874 Fitzgerald was elected city marshal, replacing T. M. Ewing, who had resigned.
Fitzgerald’s deputy city marshal was Jim Courtright.
C. C. ran for city marshal again in 1876 and was defeated by deputy Courtright. According to Robert K. DeArment in his Jim Courtright of Fort Worth, Courtright received only three votes more than Fitzgerald. In recognition of that slim margin of victory, Courtright appointed Fitzgerald deputy city marshal.
Fort Worth was a small place. No need for full names in the newspaper.
Neither man could escape some unpleasant tasks of their job.
In 1877 Fitzgerald and Courtright again were candidates for city marshal.
In April Courtright again defeated Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald remained a deputy marshal. But now he had only four months to live.
On August 25 C. D. Eison, proprietor of Pendery’s Sample Room, a saloon, claimed that earlier that day he had won a wagon from V. H. Igo in a bet on a horse race. The race had been held at the track north of town, a precursor of the 1883 driving park off Samuels Avenue.
Later that day Eison went to a stable behind the Trans-Continental Hotel to claim Igo’s wagon. Eison was accompanied by Sam Shannon and Frank Quarles (both white) and Washington Davis, twenty-five, an African American who worked for Eison as a porter at the sample room. Davis was leading a horse to hitch to the wagon.
While Eison and associates were at the stable, deputy marshal Fitzgerald happened along and saw that Eison’s horse was blocking a passageway.
The Democrat reported: “Fitzgerald peremptorily ordered him [Davis] to get [the horse] out of the way and was then cursed and abused by him [Davis] without the least provocation. This he [Fitzgerald] could not bear and consequently dealt the negro a blow, which was promptly returned when they grappled and fought for several minutes, in which Fitzgerald came out second-best, the negro being much more powerful in strength and receiving encouragement from Eison, Shannon, and others of the gang who went to the stable with him.
“In this fight Mr. Fitzgerald received an ugly wound in the face. He left the stable, armed himself, and went . . . to look for the negro.”
Near another stable just off Main Street “the negro was found, but he had been supplied with a pistol by one of his white friends, and when he saw Fitzgerald approaching took shelter in or behind the stable until a favorable opportunity presented itself when he fired at him [Fitzgerald], the ball entering the lower part of the abdomen and passing through his body, inflicting a mortal wound.
“The wounded man fired three times at the negro, who fired the second shot at him. It is stated by eyewitnesses that Sam Shannon and another of the Eison party held Fitzgerald after he was shot, probably preventing him from hitting the negro.
“A large crowd soon gathered on the scene, and Eison, Shannon, Quarles, and others who had all the while befriended the negro swore that he should not be taken by the police. Eison and Shannon . . . were particularly vociferous in expressing their determination to shield the negro murderer from the clutches of the police.”
Marshal Courtright arrived and arrested Davis, who was taken to jail.
Eison, Shannon, and Quarles also were arrested. Eison was suspected of having given Davis the pistol with which Davis shot Fitzgerald.
The Democrat reported that Fitzgerald was in “extremely critical condition, with the chances against his recovery.” He was treated by Dr. William Paxton Burts and Dr. Julian Theodore Feild. Burts had been the city’s first mayor. Feild was the son of early civic leader Julian Feild (the “Field” in “Mansfield”). Dr. Feild had treated Courtright in 1875 after Dr. Feild’s younger brother shot him.
There was talk of lynching if Fitzgerald died.
(The headline “Frank Brow Nearly Killed by Another Black Scoundrel” refers to another altercation that day.)
And Fitzgerald did die—at the home of his father one block from where he had been shot. He was twenty-nine years old. The fire bell tolled upon his death.
C. C. Fitzgerald’s funeral was held at his father’s home. Fitzgerald, like Courtright, was a member of the volunteer fire department and was honored with a fireman’s funeral. Ten years later it would be Courtright’s turn.
Washington Davis and C. D. Eison were indicted for the murder of C. C. Fitzgerald.
Meanwhile, Sam Shannon, fearing that he, too, would be indicted for his role in the murder, emptied his wife’s bank account of $400 ($10,000 today) and disappeared into the wilds of Dallas.
C. D. Eison was acquitted; similar charges against Frank Quarles were dropped. With that the white men implicated in the murder were cleared.
That left only the black man.
Washington Davis had an excellent defense team. J. H. Field and Frank Ball were prominent attorneys. Ball had been elected the city’s first city attorney in 1873. He would marry the sister of Fort Worth postmistress Ida Turner.
In March 1878 Washington Davis was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to sixty-seven years in prison. Davis had to be relieved. He had gone to trial with three strikes against him: He was an African American. He had killed a white person. He had killed a police officer.
Christopher Columbus Fitzgerald was the second Fort Worth lawman to die in the line of duty, the first being Sheriff John B. York in 1861. Fitzgerald is buried in Pioneers Rest Cemetery. The date on his tombstone is a mystery. He was not born, did not take office, did not die in 1859. And Ed Terrell was the city’s first marshal.
Christopher Columbus Fitzgerald is honored at the Fort Worth Police & Firefighters Memorial.
Now fast-forward one century and twelve days.
Jesse Ray Parris
About 3:25 p.m. on September 6, 1977 police officer Jesse Parris was driving his patrol car five miles southwest of where deputy city marshal Christopher Columbus Fitzgerald had been killed in 1877. In 1877 the area had been sparsely populated prairie. By 1977 the prairie sod had been covered by the concrete and asphalt of the urban neighborhood of Como.
Parris, a twenty-two-year veteran of the police force, was acting sergeant for the day. He was responding to a call from an employee of a liquor store at 3513 Horne Street: A man was drunk and wildly firing a pistol. He was threatening to shoot people and took a bottle of liquor without paying for it.
The dispatch actually had gone to another officer, but Parris, responding as backup officer, had been closer to the scene and arrived first.
By the time Parris arrived, the man had left the store. The store clerk told Parris that the man was a Como resident, Lemuel Lawrence Hill. He had waved a pistol and threatened her.
Officer Parris was familiar with Hill, who had been arrested dozens of times for misdemeanors.
The clerk warned Parris not to go after Hill alone because “he is crazy.”
But Parris told her he thought he could reason with Hill and drove around the corner to Hill’s home a block and a half away.
Meanwhile, Hill had returned home. Neighbors heard him fire three or four shots before officer Parris arrived.
Parris, his firearm in its holster, approached Hill. When Parris tried to disarm Hill, the two men grappled.
Neighbors heard a single gunshot.
Officer Parris, holding Hill’s pistol, staggered to his patrol car. He was attempting to radio police headquarters when he lost consciousness.
The Star-Telegram later wrote that Hill walked to the patrol car, knocked on the window, and said, “Open the door. I’m not mad at you.”
Hill then walked around to the driver’s side of the car, “reached in and patted the officer [on] the face, and said, ‘Wake up, man,’ because the officer looked funny . . . The officer did not say anything.”
When other police officers arrived, Hill told them he thought Parris must have suffered a heart attack.
After officer Parris was hospitalized, twenty-five fellow officers donated blood within two hours.
But Jesse Ray Parris died while undergoing surgery. He was fifty years old, the father of five, stepfather of three.
Hill was charged with two counts of capital murder: knowingly shooting a police officer in the performance of his duty and shooting a police officer while in the act of attempted aggravated robbery.
He denied shooting the policeman.
In November Hill’s defense attorney was preparing to argue at trial that Hill only accidentally shot officer Parris.
Then came police crime lab criminologist Max Courtney with a revelation fit for a television police drama. Courtney, after examining the evidence, especially Lemuel Hill’s belt buckle, concluded that as Hill and Parris had grappled, the pistol accidentally discharged. The bullet grazed Hill’s side. But the bullet’s ejected casing hit Hill’s belt buckle and was deflected into Parris’s abdomen, piercing two vital blood vessels.
The Star-Telegram reported: “Hill . . . probably was not even touching the firearm when it discharged.”
“Shot while in line of duty,” reads the death certificate. Max Courtney’s forensic revelation did not make officer Parris any less dead. The fact that Fate used a ricochet shot to hit the bull’s-eye did not make the circumstances of his death any less tragic, did not make Mrs. Parris any less a widow, did not bring back their father to his children.
But that revelation did cause a grand jury to reduce the charges against Lemuel Hill from capital murder to murder and involuntary manslaughter.
That meant that Lemuel Lawrence Hill would not die for the death of officer Jesse Ray Parris.
Hill pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in return for a ten-year probated sentence.
Some courthouse officials were angered by the leniency of the probated sentence, but prosecutor Steve Chaney said the sentence was appropriate for the facts.
“If he [Hill] was a cop killer, we’d go for the death penalty, but I don’t think he intentionally killed that officer,” Chaney said. “The policemen who investigated the case don’t think he did it intentionally. Max Courtney doesn’t think he did it intentionally. . . . These facts have been presented to everyone who ought to know about them, and they all agree.”
Lemuel Lawrence Hill died twenty years after the death of officer Parris.
Jesse Ray Parris is buried in Greenwood Cemetery.
Parris, like Christopher Columbus Fitzgerald, is honored at the Fort Worth Police and Firefighters Memorial in Trinity Park.
The stories of these two men show:
1. how much things change: In 1877 the local newspaper always identified African-American defendant Washington Davis by race. In 1977 the local newspaper never identified African-American defendant Lemuel Hill by race.
2. how much things remain the same: A police officer’s badge was a bull’s-eye in 1877. It remained a bull’s-eye a century later.
