Charles Brown

On June 18, 1957, Charles Brown, an African-American Air Force Airman, home on leave, was fatally shot by Raiford Walton, the subject, in the home where Walton was in Benton, Mississippi. The subject, then a 50-year-old farmer, who had been previously incarcerated for the manslaughter of his son-in-law, admitted that he shot the victim in the heart with a shotgun as the victim sat in the dining room. The victim, who was a long-time acquaintance of the subject and had worked as a farmhand, was invited to dinner on the night of the shooting. Walton claimed that he shot the victim because the victim had been “too friendly” with a mutual friend while the subject was out of town.