R.K. Bowden, marshal in civil rights era
Richard K. “Kirk” Bowden, a deputy U.S. marshal during the civil rights era who provided security at the 1963 March on Washington and for James Meredith, the first African-American student at the University of Mississippi, died Jan. 20 of congestive heart failure at his home in Silver Spring. He was 82.
Mr. Bowden was an Air Force veteran and a former District of Columbia police officer before he joined the U.S. Marshals Service in 1962.
Within months, he was assigned to provide protection for Mr. Meredith, whose enrollment at the University of Mississippi touched off one of most tumultuous moments in civil rights history. Riots claimed two lives and injured hundreds more.
White federal marshals accompanied Mr. Meredith to class, but off campus he was guarded by a small group of black deputy marshals, including Mr. Bowden.
“We were his protectors off campus,” Mr. Bowden said in a 2007 oral history interview for the Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit.
“We were armed,” he recalled, “but yes, we were in plainclothes, dressed very casual, no collar and tie. We tried to blend in with the community as best we could, to not look as though we were who we were.”
When he and the other marshals picked Mr. Meredith up from campus, Bowden said, “state troopers would follow us, not as friends but as foe.”
Later, in August 1963, Mr. Bowden was called on to provide protection for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington, where Dr. King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.
At the time, Mr. Bowden later said, he didn’t recognize the historic significance of his work.
“It was a detail, an assignment — let’s keep this guy alive kind of thing and let’s stay alive in the process,” he said. “But I was a young fellow and didn’t have the kind of foresight to say, ‘Oh wow, I’m making history.’ ”
Richard Kirkland Bowden was born Dec. 24, 1935, in Memphis and was adopted soon after birth. His father was a plumber, his mother a homemaker.
He was an amateur boxer in his youth and attended the segregated Douglass High School in Memphis — he later learned that 19th-century abolitionist and author Frederick Douglass had been a U.S. marshal.
He served in the Air Force’s criminal investigations division from 1954 to 1958, and later joined the District of Columbia police force, working as an undercover narcotics officer.
With the Marshals Service, he helped guard sequestered jurors during federal trials related to the Watergate scandal. He retired in 1987 but within a few years returned to work on contract for the Marshals Service until October 2017.
Mr. Bowden was on the board of the Luke C. Moore Academy, an alternative high school in Washington, and was a 55-year member of Allen Chapel AME Church in the District.
His first wife, the former Lovenger Hamilton, whomhe married in1964, died in 2000. Survivors include his wife of 11 years, Shirley Watkins Bowden of Silver Spring; son Richard “Rickey” Bowden Jr. of Bowie; two stepchildren, Robert “Ted” Watkins of Silver Spring and Miriam Watkins of Tallahassee, Fla; a sister; three grandchildren; and two great-granddaughters.