Location: Birmingham, Alabama
Age: 19
Year: 1948
Theris Rudolph Wood, 19, was shot to death in 1948 by police officers H. W. Brewer, J. A. Hale and J. M. Lawson in Birmingham, Alabama.
The officers accused Wood of attempting to enter an East Lake home through a bedroom window.
Newspaper reports at the time suggest the officers, upon finding Wood outside the property, shot him as he ran away.
Wood was one of six men killed by Officer J.A. Hale in Alabama between 1943 and 1950.
For more information, search CRRJ’s archive.
Read more about Wood’s death on the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive
About the Archive
The Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive houses case files and documents for more than 1,000 cases of racial homicides in the Jim Crow South. Co-founded by Melissa Nobles, professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Margaret Burnham, CRRJ director and professor of law at Northeastern, these uncovered stories highlight how violence affected lives, defined legal rights and shaped politics between 1930 and 1954.