Private Booker T. Spicely remember at vigil in his honor decades after he was killed

A Durham community gathered Monday night to honor the life and memory of Booker T. Spicely.

He was killed 80 years ago by a white bus driver in the Walltown neighborhood.

"It looks like we're still fighting some of the same battles," said Cynthia Mitchell, whose mother is Spicely's first cousin. "She said to me, 'Cynthia see this through.' So that's why I'm still hanging in."

Private Spicely was serving at nearby Camp Butner and boarded a bus the night of July 8, 1944.

When more white passengers boarded, the bus driver Herman Lee Council ordered him to sit farther to the back. Spicely moved but when he got off the bus, Council shot him twice alleging Spicely had threatened him.

Council was arrested but soon acquitted by an all-white jury.

"I think there is something almost healing and having members of this community turn up and speak up related to that wrong and that harm," said James Williams, president of the Booker T. Spicely committee.

Williams helped revive the story and convinced Duke Energy, the successor to Duke Power to endow a a $100,000 scholarship named for Spicely to be awarded to NC Central Law students.

Council was then employed by Duke Power.

On Sunday, July 7 our cameras were in attendance for a dress rehearsal of a one-man play being put on in Spicely's honor.

"I'm hoping more people become aware of things that happen historically and what we go through here," Mitchell said. "We do have the power to make some changes if we want to do that."

WATCH | Durham marker honors murdered Black soldier who stood up to segregation

A new state historical marker was unveiled at the corner of Broad Street and Club Boulevard in Durham honoring Private Booker T. Spicely, a Black U.S. Army soldier shot nearby in 1944 for resisting Jim Crow laws on a bus.