Murder of James Craig Anderson

James Craig Anderson was a 47-year-old man who worked on the assembly line at the Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi, and lived in Jackson, where he was raising an adopted son with his partner of seventeen years, James Bradfield. He was born on June 30, 1963, in Holmes County, Mississippi, and was known in his community for singing tenor in church.

In the early morning of June 26, 2011, a group of young white men and women who had been drinking in Puckett, Rankin County, drove to a predominantly Black area of Jackson, reportedly intending to attack Black residents. According to prosecutors, members of the group spotted Anderson near his own truck in the parking lot of the Metro Inn and mistakenly believed he was trying to steal a vehicle. Witnesses said Dedmon and others beat and robbed Anderson, with one witness reporting a perpetrator shouted "white power" afterward. A motel security camera did not capture the beating itself but recorded Dedmon driving his pickup truck over Anderson as he staggered along the parking lot, causing fatal injuries. Anderson died a few days later. Dedmon subsequently boasted to accomplices about the killing using a racial slur.

Dedmon was arrested by the Hinds County Sheriff on July 6, 2011, and charged with capital murder. Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith characterized the killing as a racially motivated hate crime. The FBI opened a civil rights investigation that uncovered a broader pattern of attacks against African Americans in Jackson dating from spring 2011 through March 2012, including assaults with thrown bottles, a slingshot, and attempts to run down victims with vehicles. Ten individuals were ultimately indicted for hate-crime conspiracy offenses connected to this pattern.

On March 21, 2012, Dedmon pleaded guilty to murder and a federal hate crime charge and was sentenced to two concurrent life terms in Mississippi state court. The following day, Dedmon, John Aaron Rice, and Dylan Butler pleaded guilty to federal hate crime and conspiracy charges. In December 2012, additional defendants, including William Kirk Montgomery and Jonathan Kyle Gaskamp, also pleaded guilty. On February 10, 2015, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves sentenced Dedmon to 50 years, Rice to 18.5 years, and Butler to 7 years in federal prison, with sentences running concurrently to state terms and no parole eligibility. All ten individuals charged in the broader conspiracy eventually pleaded guilty.

Anderson's family, citing their Christian faith and concerns about the historic racial disparities in Mississippi's use of capital punishment, asked prosecutors to spare the defendants the death penalty. With assistance from the Southern Poverty Law Center, family members filed a wrongful-death civil suit against several of those involved. The case drew national attention after release of the motel security video, prompting a public march in Jackson and broader scrutiny of racially motivated violence in the region. Anderson's family later established the James Craig Anderson Foundation for Racial Tolerance in his memory.