Reverend Pleasant Bowler and the First All African American Male Jury

Tombigbee Tales

Pleasant Bowler was a scam artist and flim flam man who posed as a Baptist minister and helped found the Shiloh Baptist Church in Burns Bottom in Columbus, Mississippi after the Civil War. He murdered Sheriff Cline in a struggle and was brought before a Reconstruction Era Judge from Ohio and an all Black male jury in the Lowndes County Courthouse in 1869. This jury is alleged to be the first all Black jury in US history.