Killing of Joetha Collier
1971 homicide in the United States
Joetha Collier (September 20, 1952 – May 25, 1971) was an American high school student who was shot and killed on the night of her graduation in Drew, Mississippi, United States. The killing, which was committed by a White American against an African American, drew widespread media attention and the attention of several civil rights activists.
Collier was a black woman who was 18 years old at the time of her death. Earlier in the day, she had graduated from Drew High School, a recently integrated institution, and planned to attend Mississippi Valley State College. That evening, she was celebrating with several friends in Drew when someone in a passing vehicle shot her in the neck with a .22 caliber gun. She died before reaching the hospital. The individuals in the car—Wayne Parks, Wesley Parks, and Allan Wilkenson—were arrested early the next morning and charged with murder. In a trial later that year against Wesley (the individual who had fired the shot that killed Collier), he said that he had been drunk at the time of the shooting and had been unaware that anyone had been shot. He was ultimately found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment, though he was released early. Charges against the other two were dropped.
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This entry incorporates text from “Killing of Joetha Collier” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.