Kerrick Majors

Outcome

unknown

In April 1987, Kerrick Majors, a 14 year old Black boy, was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in a racially motivated hate crime in Nashville. Majors had been walking with friends in the East Nashville area when a brief confrontation occurred after a vase valued at two dollars was accidentally broken at a makeshift flea market operated by three white individuals. Following the incident, Majors was chased, captured, and taken away from his friends. He was bound, beaten, and subjected to hours of torture while his attackers shouted racial slurs. According to court testimony, Majors was stripped, repeatedly assaulted, burned, and stabbed. He died from his injuries, and his body was discovered the following day. The murder was carried out by Donald Ray Middlebrooks, Tammy Middlebrooks, and Robert Brewington Jr. All three were convicted. Donald Middlebrooks was sentenced to death, while Tammy Middlebrooks and Brewington, both juveniles at the time of the crime, received life sentences. The case drew national attention due to its brutality and because it marked a rare instance in which a white defendant received a death sentence for killing a Black victim. The handling of the case also raised serious concerns about racial bias in law enforcement. Police were criticized for their delayed response after Majors was reported missing, and his family later filed a civil lawsuit alleging that the slow investigation contributed to his death. Kerrick Majors’s murder occurred decades after the formal end of Jim Crow, underscoring that racial terror did not disappear with civil rights legislation. His killing revealed how deeply entrenched racial violence remained, particularly against Black children, and why protest, documentation, and public accountability continued to be necessary well into the late twentieth century.