One man against the mob: a legend in the mold of Davy Crockett, Sheriff Buford Pusser reclaimed Tennessee's McNairy County from the murderous "State Line Mob.".

Striding into the White Iris Club with his best friend Webb Pierce, 16-year-old Buford Pusser knew he shouldn't have come. For weeks, Webb and other classmates had been pestering Buford to join them on an excursion to the notorious gambling den, located just inside Tennessee's southern border. While Buford had no business visiting a bar at his age, what he witnessed on that night in December 1953 would change his life.

After weaving their way through the half-drunken couples who cluttered the dance floor, Buford and his buddies found a small table in the corner and tried to make themselves inconspicuous. While nursing their beers, the boys heard a commotion erupt in a back room, where a sailor, wearing his uniform and an enraged expression, loudly accused a slender, redfaced man of cheating at dice.

Trailing a dense cloud of military-issue profanity, the sailor started to storm out of the bar. Suddenly a heavyset brunette woman materialized next to him and, without warning, drew a claw hammer from her apron. From behind, the woman struck the sailor in the head. Bleeding profusely from his head wound, the sailor desperately scrambled for the door; the woman continued her attack, repeatedly smashing his head while screaming profane abuse.

"Let's get out of here," Buford whispered urgently to his friends, fighting down a wave of nausea. Before they could reach the door, it swung open to admit the portly figure of a local deputy sheriff.

Glancing at the mortally wounded sailor, sprawled on the floor in a pool of his own blood, the deputy asked: "What in the world happened here, Louise?"

"The b*****d just died of a heart attack," declared the murderous shrew, as the crowd erupted in laughter. "All right, Louise, if you say so," replied the deputy with a knowing smirk. "Get me a drink while I call an ambulance."

This was Buford Pusser's first encounter with the infamous "State Line Mob," which was affiliated with a loosely organized network of local crime syndicates called the Dixie Mafia. The state line "was a cooling-off spot, where major-league thugs hid out between hits and heists," recalled Tennessee crime reporter Chris Davis. In the late 1950s, circuit-riding mob hit men and thugs for hire of all varieties--including Lee Harvey Oswald--could be seen sampling the state line's illicit delights.

Although state line clubs such as the White Iris and the Shamrock were famously hospitable to mobsters, their hospitality toward innocent travelers was a snare like that used with such murderous success by India's diabolical Thugee cult. Davis points out that "many a hungry traveler stopped in [to the Shamrock club], lured by the prospect of a 49-cent country ham breakfast, only to find himself robbed and beaten. If the unfortunate party threatened to tell the law, be was as good as dead, wrapped in logging chains at the bottom of the Tennessee River."

Obviously, a criminal racket of this sort depended on the purchased indifference--or, on some occasions, active connivance--of local law enforcement and judicial officials. Sixteen-year-old Buford Pusser witnessed a revealing example of that official corruption on the night of his visit to the White Iris. Sickened as he was by the spectacle of a man being beaten to death in front of his eyes, Buford found the deputy's dereliction of duty even more repellent.

"She killed that sailor," he exclaimed to his friends as they fled the White Iris. "She beat him to death with that hammer and that d****d deputy did nothing! Nobody's safe with that kind of thing going on." Rough around the edges though he might be--once again, the 16-year-old had no business being in a bar--Buford had a strong sense of justice, which had been on display from his earliest childhood.

Gentle Giant

Buford had always been big. Nine pounds at his birth on December 12, 1937, he would eventually grow into a six-foot, six-inch, 250-pound behemoth. His father Carl was a large man described as having "muscles as hard as marble," the admirable residue of a life of honest labor. An outspoken conservative Republican among wall to-wall New Deal Democrats---this was the era of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Civilian Conservation Corps--Carl Pusser wasn't at all shy expressing his disdain for government handouts. Nor was he too proud to take any honorable work he could find to support his family.

Like his father, Buford reveled in active labor--whether it was picking cotton, hauling sacks of seed or fertilizer at a local store in Adamsville, or working on an oil pipeline in Oklahoma. His physical stature, coupled with his work ethic and natural athleticism, made Buford an outstanding high school athlete. His exploits as a starting fullback earned the attention of major college scouts, as did his 27 point per game average with the basketball team.

Although he'd always been big, he'd never been inclined to push others around. In fact, during his grade school years Buford's gentleness made him an easy mark for meaner kids. While he endured teasing directed at him with natural good humor, he became indignant when smaller or more helpless children were schoolyard victims. Nature had equipped him to be a bully--but his pious mother Helen had taught him the Beatitudes, and his hardworking father had instilled in him a sense of justice.

As his ill-advised trip to the White Iris illustrates, Buford occasionally cut up trouble in his youth. He never outgrew his youthful enthusiasm for driving a little too fast--a trait that would eventually prove quite costly. Still, he made friends easily and both peers and adults admired his outgoing nature, politeness and industry.

Following high school, Buford surprised his parents by enlisting in the Marines. A splendid physical specimen and a young man already accustomed to long, arduous work, Buford quickly adapted to the regimen at South Carolina's Parris island Recruit Depot. But the crucible of basic training revealed that the gentle giant had a previously unknown weakness--asthma.

A Second Encounter

In November 1956, a bus decanted Buford in Adamsville, Tennessee. Wearing his Marine recruit's uniform and carrying $100 in his pocket, Buford was happy to see his hometown again, but dejected over his failure to make the Corps. "I've always told you, Buford, that everything always works out best for them that believe and trust in the Lord," his mother reminded him. "God has a place for you in life, and it wasn't in the Marines. You've got to be patient."

Buford's patience would be tested further a few weeks later when he was nearly killed in an automobile accident--the first of three he would endure. A two-month stint in the hospital did nothing to cure his frustration. By February, Buford was fully recovered physically, but he was still hostage to youthful bad judgment. Ignoring his previous experience and his mother's admonitions, he set out once again for the state line, this time selecting the Plantation Club, a dive owned by W.O. Hathcock, brother-in-law to Louise--the harridan who murdered the sailor in front of Buford and his buddies.

Buford walked into the Plantation Club and was immediately enticed into a backroom game of craps. After a few throws of the dice, Buford had amassed a sizeable roll of cash, thereby provoking one of the club's men to change the dice.

"Okay, I saw you switch dice," Buford told the man, anger coloring his voice. "Let's just keep playing with the other ones." instantly Buford was seized by four large men, who pulled him away from the gaming table and began to beat him. Lying on the floor, bleeding and dimly conscious, Buford felt the hands of his assailants rifling through his pockets. After he was divested of his winnings--and the other contents of his wallet--Buford was picked up, carried out the front door, and deposited face-first in the rain-soaked gravel driveway. After recovering sufficient strength, Buford drove himself to a nearby clinic, where he received 192 stitches in his head and face.

From the Mat to Matrimony 

Though he seethed with a desire to avenge his beating, Buford chose instead to find full-time work. A brief stint as a mortician's assistant in Adamsville prompted him to enroll at a mortician's school in Chicago, where he and two hometown friends found daytime work at a paper mill. He also found an unusual way to supplement his income: During weekends, he performed as a professional wrestler under the stage name "Buford the Bull."

At the time--the late 1950s--professional wrestling hadn't yet descended into its present miasma of corruption and perversion and was relatively family-friendly. Peculiar as it may seem, it was at a pro wrestling bout that Buford met Pauline Mullins, a pretty young divorcee with two children. Buford and Pauline were married on December 5, 1959, just seven days before his 22nd birthday.

Less than a month later, the State Line Mob rudely interrupted the Pusser family's wedded bliss.

Late in the evening on January 4, 1960, the tranquility of the Pusser household was shattered by an insistent knock on the door. Pauline opened the door to find two police detectives bearing an extradition order from a magistrate in Corinth, Mississippi. The summons ordered Buford's arrest on charges of armed robbery and the attempted murder of W.O Hathcock, owner of the same Plantation Club where Buford had been beaten for protesting a crooked dice game. Hathcock claimed that Buford and two of his friends had robbed him at gunpoint and beaten him nearly to death on the night of December 13, roughly a week after Buford's wedding.

After being arrested, handcuffed and booked into custody in Chicago, Buford and his friends, Jerry Wright and Marvin King, were taken in chains to Alcorn, Mississippi, in the custody of Hillie Coleman, a corrupt, abusive sheriff who was chummy with the State Line Mob. A few weeks later they were put on trial by a district attorney described by Buford's father as "so crooked he has to screw his britches on every morning."

Testifying on behalf of the prosecution were W.O. Hathcock and his wife, Lorece, Sheriff Hillie Coleman and his deputy, and several other tainted law-enforcement officers. The case against Buford rested entirely on two pieces of "evidence": Hathcock's unsupported accusation, and Sheriff Coleman's description of Buford as a "known troublemaker" (despite the fact that, by the sheriff's own admission, the young man had never been arrested for anything).

District Attorney N.S. Sweat--a vain, ambitious martinet--supplemented his meager case with artlessly leading questions and lengthy speeches laden with hearsay. When Buford took the stand in his own defense, Sweat accused him of traveling several hundred miles to the Plantation Club "to seek revenge for the beating you received there one night at the hands of some dice players." But Buford's claim that he never left Illinois was verified by at least six eyewitnesses, as well as his time card at work and other documentary evidence.

Summarizing his spurious case, D.A. Sweat pointedly reminded the jury that key witnesses against Buford "wear the badge of justice"--a telling indictment of the rampant corruption abetted by the State Line Mob. The jury retired, ate supper and returned two hours later with a not guilty verdict. While it's unclear what Buford had done to provoke the State Line Mob's malevolent interest, it was now clear that the Mob could be beaten.

Grappling with Bears and Mobsters

A few months after his vindication in court, Buford returned with his family to Adamsville. To his delight, he learned that he and Pauline would have a child together; their daughter, Dwana, was born in 1961. By that time, Buford and Pauline were comfortably settled in his old hometown, where he had resumed his prowrestling career. His most memorable victory came in a stunt match involving a 165-pound black bear (not much more than a cub): Buford won a $50 prize for "defeating" his puzzled ursine opponent by hitting it with a football block and pinning its back to the mat.

But Buford, knowing he obviously couldn't support his family as a "rassler," was still in the hunt for a real job. His father, at the time Adamsville's police chief, suggested that the 24-year-old take the position if the town board would agree. Buford discussed the offer with his wife, who eagerly agreed. After all, she observed, "All you have to do is arrest a few drunks and stop a few speeders." With the town board's approval, Carl Pusser turned the office over to his son, while staying on as jailer.

Pauline proved to be correct about the relatively modest duties Buford assumed as police chief. For several months his only serious challenge was to keep local teenage drag-racers under control. In August 1962, he ran for and won the local district constable's office, which expanded his duties to include dealing with local moonshiners. Essentially a form of tax enforcement, the crackdown on illegal whiskey stills wasn't Buford's favorite duty, and when possible he preferred to run the moonshiners out of his territory without really "lowering the hammer" on them.

Buford also preferred to work with the local sheriff, rather than federal "revenuers," in dealing with illicit stills. But this presented a significant problem: The local sheriff was on the take from the State Line Mob, which was making a healthy profit from bootlegging, prostitution and crooked gambling. So in 1964, Buford decided to run for the office of McNairy County Sheriff. "If you elect me," he declared in his stump speech, "I will clean up the corruption and violence that has made the state line notorious. I'll make McNairy County a decent place to live and raise a family."

Despite his youth, and the disadvantage of being a conservative Republican in an in tensely Democratic region, Buford quickly became the odds on favorite to win. One telling straw in the wind was a "campaign gift"--that is, a bribe--offered by none other than Louise Hathcock, who had recently killed her husband in what she insisted was an act of self-defense. Shortly before the election, incumbent Sheriff James Dickey was found dead in his wrecked car--an incident many believed to be an act of Mob retribution, or perhaps a warning to Dickey's likely successor. In any case, Buford won the election handily and was sworn in on September 1, 1964.

The 26-year-old sheriff immediately made good on his campaign promise, making regular rounds of the State Line circuit to serve notice that he--unlike his predecessors--would enforce the law. Sleep became a luxury.

"My Dad was the first law enforcement officer in a long term who simply did honest police work," recalled his daughter, Dwana Pusser Garrison, in an interview with THE NEW AMERICAN. "He was, if you'll pardon the expression, hell-bent on not letting the mob run the county. Where some of his predecessors would simply allow a lot of criminal activity to go on out at the state line, Daddy would get right in their late. When people broke the law, Daddy would bring them in."

Perhaps the single most important factor in restoring the rule of law was Buford's sheer physical presence and force of will. "He was a quiet, soft-spoken guy, but when he showed up, he was noticed." Dwana points out. "A 6'6" guy who takes a size 54 jacket doesn't need to make a whole lot of noise to get people's attention" especially if he's brandishing a large club, as Buford sometimes did in the early days of his law enforcement career.

The iconic image of Buford as a clubtoting sheriff, Dwana explains, "came about because in the beginning, when he could, Daddy of ten made his rounds without even carrying a gun. He'd sometimes break off a large tree limb. Once, when he had to deal with a group of teenage hoodlums he literally took a switch to them and sent them home. I suppose this kind of thing would be called 'police brutality' today." Predictably, Buford found it necessary to abandon the club in favor of a .41 caliber Magnum.

Threats on Buford's life began to accumulate. And within a few weeks of assuming his duties, the youthful sheriff received the first of what would be numerous wounds of office when he was stabbed during an altercation with a knife-wielding thug. Eventually Buford would accumulate eight gunshot wounds and seven stab wounds.

As he stood for re-election in 1966, Buford had earned the enthusiastic support of a majority of McNairy County residents. His wife Pauline was an outspoken exception. Though she admired her husband's accomplishments, her nerves were frayed by the endless procession of worry-plagued nights. Buford wasn't just rousting the occasional drunk or collaring the random speeder; he was now taking on a deeply entrenched, politically powerful criminal syndicate.

Winning re-election with little difficulty, Buford continued to endure efforts by Louise Hathcock and other mob denizens to bribe him. Eventually Buford attempted to arrest Hathcock, who responded by pulling a .38-caliber handgun and attempting to kill him. Her first shot went wild, and the revolver jammed on her second attempt. Pulling his .41-caliber Magnum, Buford killed Louise with a single shot--an act that, although justified, would haunt him for the rest of his life.

The Twelfth of August

Shortly before her attempt to murder Sheriff Pusser, Louise Hathcock had taken up with a psychotic ex-convict named Charles "Towhead" White, known in Mississippi as the "Al Capone of Alcorn County." By age 33, White had emerged as the State Line kingpin and one of the top ranking underworld figures in the southern U.S. Although White's interest in Louise Hathcock was entirely opportunistic, the hoodlum decided to avenge her death by murdering Sheriff Pusser--if he could.

Threatening phone calls began to pour in to the sheriff's office and the Pusser home. "We're going to take your sweet little kids out in the swamps and cut off their sweet little heads," one caller told Pauline. "Your husband ain't got long to live," insisted another. "There was a $10,000 reward on his head, and I'm going to collect it."

The first attempt to execute the contract came in January 1967, when two unidentified men attempted to kill Buford in a highway confrontation. Although he took four .25 caliber slugs from his assailants, Buford survived. Shortly thereafter, White and an accomplice were taken into custody. But even behind bars. the mob chieftain continued plotting Sheriff Pusser's murder.

In the early hours of Saturday, August 12, 1967, Buford and Pauline were startled awake by the insistent ringing of the bedside phone. The caller told Sheriff Pusser that "serious trouble" was brewing somewhere on New Hope Road, near the state line. As Buford threw on his uniform, Pauline begged him to take her along; she wasn't willing for her husband to go to the state line alone again. Grudgingly, the sheriff acceded to his wife's request.

Traveling west on U.S. 64, Buford and Pauline speculated about the nature of the emergency. They also discussed their planned trip to Virginia, which would begin later that day. As they reached New Hope, the sun was peeking over the eastern horizon. "This is going to be a beautiful day," murmured Pauline. "Makes you want to live forever."

Just minutes later, recalled author W.R. Morris in The Twelfth of August, "Buford and Pauline heard the roar of an engine [and a] black car was beside them. Orange flames belched from a .30-caliber carbine, and the window on the left side shattered, spraying Pusser's face with slivers of glass. The shots missed him and slammed into Pauline's head. She moaned, grabbing Buford's arm as she slumped down in her seat."

Frantically, Buford floored the accelerator, trying to put some distance between his car and the assassins. Two miles down the road, he pulled over to examine his wife. "Oh, God, please don't let her die," he prayed. Placing Pauline's head on his lap, Buford assessed the damage and knew that his wife was gone. He couldn't even spare a moment to grieve; the assailants had returned for a second attempt. The second volley blew off most of Buford's jaw, leaving him slumped on the floorboards, apparently dead. Satisfied that they'd accomplished their cowardly task, the murderers sped off into the daybreak.

A local grocer spotted the wrecked car and reported the ambush. Police and rescue personnel rapidly converged on the scene. Buford's father Carl, after learning of the shooting over police band radio, was at the hospital when his son was brought in. One glimpse of the assassins' handiwork--half of Buford's face had literally been shot off--convinced Carl that his son wouldn't survive the day.

Even as his son was being prepped for emergency surgery, Carl suffered another blow when he learned that Pauline, who had chosen this of all mornings to accompany her husband, had been killed in the attack. To Carl and his wife Helen fell the inconceivably sorrowful task of breaking the news to their still-sleeping grandchildren.

Hundreds of people gathered for Pauline's funeral a few days later at the Adamsville Church of Christ. In his eulogy, Rev. E.E. Thomas recalled the times Pauline had expressed to him her fears for Sheriff Pusser's life. Extolling Buford as a man who bore "the marks of bravery," Rev. Thomas urged that the citizens of McNairy County offer prayers on his behalf, not only for comfort but for divine support in his struggle to vindicate the rule of law. "Our Sheriff ... is the man who stands between us, you and I, all the people, and the forces which would destroy us," declared the reverend.

Walking Tall

After receiving extensive reconstructive surgery on his face, Buford was re-elected to a final term as sheriff in 1970, since he was forbidden by law to seek a fourth consecutive term. While not neglecting his other duties, Buford spent much of his final years as sheriff trying to find and apprehend those responsible for his wife's murder, which he believed was carried out at the direction of "Towhead" White. As it happened, White was killed in an April 1969 altercation that had nothing to do with Buford.

By then, the State Line Mob had been run to ground: Confronted by a principled, incorruptible sheriff, the syndicate abandoned its archipelago of vice dens and moved on. Buford's success in busting the Mob, and his personal tragedy, produced national headlines and was immorialized in a series of Country & Western ballads and a 1971 theatrical film entitled Walking Tall (recently remade with actor/prowrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in the title role). By the early 1970s, Buford was a familiar presence at statewide charity functions, and found himself touted as a potential candidate for governor.

It's difficult to know what turns Buford's public career might have taken had he not died in an automobile accident in August 1974, shortly after the seventh anniversary of his wife's murder. Some observers suspected that the State Line Mob--or perhaps its political allies I had finally wrought revenge on Sheriff Pusser. Others have concluded that Pusser's death, like that of General George Patton, was a legitimate accident, however fortuitous it might have been for certain corrupt and ambitious people.

"I was the first to find Daddy after the wreck," Dwana recounted to THE NEW AMERICAN. "At the time I was only thirteen, and there should have been no way I could have pulled him from the wreckage, but the adrenaline was surging through me and somehow I managed to do it. He'd suffered so much, and even though I knew he was gone I just couldn't sit there and let him burn."

Dwana is firmly convinced that her father was murdered. "There had been serious discussion that Daddy would have been appointed state Commissioner of Public Safety," she points out. "There were plenty of powerful people who didn't want that to happen, and some of them are still around today." One measure of Buford's impact was displayed at his funeral, which was attended by thousands--including Elvis Presley and actor Joe Don Baker, who played Buford in Walking Tall.

Dwana, who operates an Adamsville museum dedicated to her father's memory, was deprived of both her parents at a very early age. Her grandmother Helen, with a perspective born of faith, helped put that terrible loss in perspective. Recalls Dwana: "I was just having my own pity party when my grandma said to me, 'Honey, your daddy left you something that not too many other people have. He left you a legend.'"