Private Booker Thomas Spicely (December 1, 1909 – July 8, 1944)

Other incidents in this period included Irene Morgan in July 1944 being arrested and jailed in Virginia for refusing to give up her seat on an interstate bus to a White person.

Biography
Spicely was born in Blackstone, Virginia, to Lazarus and Alberta Spicely. He attended two years of high school and was a cook before volunteering for the United States Army on December 31, 1943, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

He did not work for the Tuskegee Institute like most stories say. It was his brother Robert who was actually a former business manager there. His serial number was 33809308, and he was trained as a cook in the Army.

In 1944, Private Spicely was stationed at Camp Butner, North Carolina during WWII. While on a pass into the nearby city of Durham on July 8, 1944, he was visiting friends in Durham's Hayti neighborhood that Saturday. Afterwards, he boarded a bus, owned and operated by Duke Power to head back to Camp Butner, in Butner, NC. (Off I-85 North)

Accompanied by a Black woman he was talking to at the bus stop, and according to her sworn statement, they sat in the second to last seat and not in the front as reported.

The White bus driver told them all to move to the last seat for some White soldiers who boarded, as public transportation was racially segregated in North Carolina. The woman did, but Spicely refused, initially asking the other soldiers why he had to move since he was not aware of the laws in North Carolina.

There was conflicting testimony exactly what PVT Spicely said but one of the White soldiers mentioned that he said "I thought I was fighting this war for democracy".

The White bus driver then said "shut up or get off". During the ride, PVT Spicely continued arguing with the bus driver until he exited the bus at Broad and West Club.

That's when witnesses watched Council follow him off the bus armed with a .38 caliber pistol, and puts two bullets in his back, the Army private was bleeding and dying, just seconds away from Watts Hospital -- now known in Durham as the NC School of Science and Mathematics.

But back then, the hospital was Whites only. Spicely was denied medical care, they told him no. He later arrived dead at Duke Hospital. Council was later arrested and charged with murder, Duke Power paid his $2,500 bail.

His cause of death is listed as homicide ("shot by bus driver"), with sudden death occurring due to a "pistol shot wound through heart" with a secondary cause of "pistol shot through liver".

The driver, Herman Lee Council a Duke Power employee, was tried for the second-degree murder of Spicely.
He claimed he shot Spicely in self-defense, he was acquitted by the all-White jury on the grounds of self-defense.

Chief Counsel for the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall, was involved in prosecuting the case.
According to some sources, due to Spicely's murder, a riot ensued in the tobacco warehouse district of Durham, resulting in the destruction (via arson) of several of the White-owned tobacco warehouses.
However, contemporary newspaper accounts make no mention of a connection between Spicely's death and the warehouse district fire.

The War Department conducted an investigation of Spicely's death titled Subject: Racial Incident, Shooting of Negro Soldier, Durham, N.C. on 8 July 1944 at about 1940, dated July 12, 1944. His cause of death, which occurred during World War II, is listed as DNB, or “Died, Non-Battle.”

Spicely's body was returned to his home in Blackstone, Virginia, for burial.

Bus driver Herman Lee Council died in a nursing home in 1982.

Earlier in 2023, Duke Energy, the successor to Duke Power, endowed a $100,000 scholarship named for Booker T. Spicely to be awarded annually to NC Central law students actively enrolled or involved in NCCU's Veterans Law Clinic.

Source: Wikipedia
Source: https://abc11.com/murder-pvt-booker-t-spicely.../13811229/