Janice Polk Shivers Loftin recalls, at the tender age of 5, being held in her father's arms as a man took them around the back of the gymnasium at the old school in Bunker Hill.
The man, a bootlegger, offered her father, the Marion County sheriff, money to leave their illicit trade alone.
But Sheriff J.V. Polk just laughed and said, “I wouldn’t take a bribe from my mother.”
That hard stand against lawlessness would ultimately come at a high price. On April 22, 1960 — 60 years ago this month — a moonshiner fired a fatal blast at Polk as he stood on his front porch in Bunker Hill, a shot that shocked the community and changed the lives of his family forever.
“He died because of his beliefs, but he was my daddy and that is what makes it special,” Loftin, Polk’s youngest daughter, said this week at her home.
Strong morals
Mississippi outlawed liquor in 1908, before the entire country did through the 18th Amendment in 1920. While Prohibition ended nationwide in 1933, Mississippi continued to enforce a statewide prohibition until 1966, according to Carol Durham, curator of the Marion County Museum & Archives, who is working on an exhibit about prohibition and Polk’s life.
In many counties sheriffs looked the other way, often because of cash put in their pockets by powerful and organized crime syndicates. However, Polk was known for his hard stance on enforcing the alcohol ban in Marion County.
He was raised that way and had strong morals, his daughter said. She recalls her parents as stern, but her father as very affectionate and her mother, Olie Polk, as very dedicated. They truly loved each other and their children, she said.
They had met because her father was a barber, and her mother was a beautician. One day her mother walked through the barber shop to get to the beauty shop, and he said one day he was going to marry her. Her mother said he was the ugliest looking thing she had ever seen; at the time his hair was dyed, and he had a perm.
But love soon developed. In fact, her mother’s last memory of her father before he was killed was she was working in a beauty shop and her father drove by the shop and did a “catcall” whistle at her.
Polk's soft side was also seen in his love for little children, often taking them around in his patrol car. He used to have toy badges and handcuffs he would hand out, and Loftin knows of two men in the Bunker Hill area who still have the toy badge or handcuffs Polk gave them.
Polk held his strong beliefs not only with the residents of Marion County but also with his family. They got up and went to church, no questions asked. Loftin said one night the girls wanted to stay home because Elvis would be on the Ed Sullivan Show, but Polk said no and made them go to worship services.
“It was not an option; when church was there you went,” she said.
Loftin, who moved back to Bunker Hill near where she grew up after living in Bassfield for 37 years, said they were poor but didn't know it, having everything they needed, food to eat and a nice country home.
“They were the perfect example of Christian parents; I could not give a better example than my parents,” Loftin said.
Running for sheriff
Polk first ran for sheriff in 1951, and the bootleggers began targeting him then.
"We got threats on the phone, all sorts of threats of what they were going to do,” Loftin said.
Rightfully so, his family was concerned, but he told them not to worry about it. In fact, Loftin said even though you could sometimes see it on his face, he would never let on what all he was dealing with to his family. She said she never saw him look afraid.
Once he made it through the first four years, at the time he was not allowed to run for a consecutive term so he made his way back to the barber shop. When the next four years were coming to an end and the election was coming up, ministers and religious leaders came to the house to visit to encourage Polk to run again.
“They knew what he stood for,” she said.
Voters elected Polk in 1959 for a second time, and he took office in January 1960.
Loftin said one night her father made a raid, and it took two moving vans to haul in the whiskey still. Bootlegging was big business in Marion County, which became even more clear on Friday, April 22, 1960.
April 22, 1960
Loftin still remembers the night it happened.
That same evening there was a youth revival at Bunker Hill Baptist Church, and everyone knew if you hung out at the Polks house afterwards, they would be safe and have a great time, Loftin said. She said there was a yard full of teenagers before the boys got into a car and went “riding.” After everyone had left, Loftin and her sister came inside the house and heard a shotgun blast. They rushed to the front door.
Willie B. McCain had ambushed Polk as the sheriff was walking across the porch at 10:30 p.m.
One of his deputies, Ray Loftin, was backing out of the driveway when it happened. Loftin, who usually rode with Polk, was screaming at Janice and her sister, Sandra Polk, to stay inside because the shooter was still outside. Her sister didn’t listen and came around to the front porch after exiting the back door.
Their mother at first was in shock but once the shock wore off, Loftin still remembers her mother with her father’s head in her lap on the porch. Blood was all over both of them.
While he was pronounced dead hours later at Marion General Hospital, Loftin said her father was pretty much gone there at the house. She said she can still remember seeing him lying on the porch. His head was blocking the screen door, but she could see where the side of his head had been hit.
Meanwhile Loftin’s brother, Charles Lewis “Bud” Polk, was in town and had the worst premonition and told his friends he had to get home. When he got there, the ambulance was already at the house.
Loftin said as a teenager she just knew she was going to wake up and realize it was all a bad dream. She said she felt like that for months.
Loftin recalls an FBI agent talking to the family the next day. The agent told the family the FBI had never seen so much organized crime in an area the size of Marion County. There was belief, at the time, that the mafia based out of New Orleans was heavily involved.
Loftin recalled at the trial McCain sat on the witness stand and laughed and said he could have killed the whole bunch of them, showing no remorse.
The district attorney, Vernon Broom, mentioned the electric chair in his closing argument, saying if there was ever a need for it, McCain deserved it. McCain was convicted June 17, 1960, to life in the state penitentiary.
Hillary Thornhill, who was described in the press at the time as the “kingpin of Marion County bootleggers” and the mastermind behind the killing, also stood trial and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Four others, Eugene Robertson, Basal Rogers, Shirley Lee and Desolee Thornhill, pleaded guilty to various charges, although some of those convictions were later overturned.
First female sheriff
After the murder, the Board of Supervisors asked Loftin’s mother if she would serve as interim sheriff until a special election was held. It was a common practice in those days for widow's of elected officials who died in office to be appointed to temporarily fill their positions. It has been previously reported that his wife had gone on raids with Polk, but Loftin said that was not the case. Loftin said her mother helped keep the log book and recorded things for him, but that was the extent of her involvement.
Mrs. Polk agreed to be appointed, and not only held the office temporarily but considered running during the special election. Her mother sat down with the three children and told them they had lost their daddy and it could not be for nothing. The children agreed with her and encouraged her to run.
She went on to win the special election, becoming the first female sheriff in Mississippi.
Even though the sheriff was a woman, Loftin said that never stopped the threats. Her mother would still receive threats from the bootleggers, but she still stayed tough on enforcing the law.
Her mother would stay up late and get up early to make sure the children didn’t miss out, including sending all three children to Mississippi College without having to take any student loans.
There are so many levels of grief, Loftin said. She and her brother both dealt with it more outwardly with bitterness than her sister. However, she realized that a person could not move forward in the grief process until after they deal with the hate.
“I had hate for a long time,” Loftin recalled.
Once her mother ceased to be sheriff, Loftin said she breathed a sigh of relief. Loftin was attending Mississippi College when her mother went back to work as a beautician. However, Loftin said the fear of something happening to her mother would nag her for the longest time.
But the most vexing thing to Loftin was her mother, who died in 2014 at 97, would never call what happened a murder or a killing. She would always refer to it as an accident.
Loftin said it used to make her angry because her mother would not call it what it was. Loftin even asked her why she would never call it what it was. One day not long after that, Loftin walked in on her mother, who was on her knees, praying for the people who had done the killing. Loftin asked her why because personally she was ready to kill them for what they did.
“You can’t live with hate," her mother replied.
