Isaiah Nixon

Isaiah Nixon, 28, a farmer, turpentine worker, and WWII veteran, was shot three times in his own front yard in Alston on the evening of September 8, 1948, in front of his wife and six children, hours after voting in the Georgia Democratic primary; he died two days later in a hospital in neighboring Laurens County. Two white brothers, Jim A. Johnson and Johnnie Johnson, drove to the Nixon home and ordered him to come with them; when he refused, Jim Johnson shot him. A local grand jury charged Jim Johnson with murder and Johnnie Johnson as an accessory, and the case drew national NAACP attention, but an all-white jury acquitted Jim Johnson, and prosecutors then dropped the case against his brother. The Nixon family fled to Florida after the killing, and their father's grave in a remote cemetery went unmarked and lost to underbrush for 67 years, until Emory University researchers located it in 2015 with the help of Nixon's daughter, Dorothy Nixon Williams, who was six years old when she witnessed her father's death.

Alston, GA · Montgomery County

• 1948: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• Victim identity and the September 8, 1948 date and circumstances, per the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project at Emory University and the federal Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board.
• Jim A. Johnson was tried for murder and acquitted by an all-white jury; the accessory charge against Johnnie Johnson was subsequently dropped.

• No one was ever held criminally responsible for the killing.
• The full contents of the FBI's contemporaneous investigation into the case were not made public.

• Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project, Emory University — case summary
• Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board — official case file
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs