Pvt. Albert King’s body was still warm when his killer’s trial began at 3:02 p.m. on March 24, 1941. Sgt. Robert Lummus faced the charge of manslaughter — of willfully, feloniously and unlawfully killing King. Outside the court-martial room at Fort Benning, Ga., under overcast skies, some 50,000 soldiers were training for the possibility that the United States would enter World War II.
One day earlier, on Sunday afternoon, King had departed Fort Benning with a good-conduct card in hand. He was dressed in uniform — olive-green slacks, shirt, necktie and field cap — and headed for the nearby city of Columbus, where his grandmother, who’d recently died after a heart attack, had lived in a small shotgun house with a full porch.
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