Walking Tall: The Legend of Sheriff Buford Pusser

Scott: 00:00:00

In the heart of McNair County, Tennessee, nestled amongst the rolling hills and dense forests lay the quiet town of Adamsville.

But beneath its peaceful facade, a dark current of corruption, moonshining, gambling and prostitution flowed, particularly along the notorious Mississippi Tennessee state line. It was into this simmering cauldron of vice that Buford Hayes Pusser, a man destined to become a legend, would walk tall carrying a very big stick.

Gentleman here is the gentleman who's life is the subject of the movie Walk and Talk. Buford Pusser. From the moment he donned his sheriff's badge, Buford Pusser declared war on illegal activities plaguing his community.

He was relentless, his methods often unconventional, but undeniably effective. He smashed moonshine stills, raided gambling dens and confronted the criminals who operated.

He faced constant threats, numerous assassination attempts and endured multiple, multiple stabbings and shootings. He was shot eight times and stabbed seven times throughout his career, each scar a testament to his resolve.

Buford Pusser's unwavering commitment to justice, his courage in the face of overwhelming odds, and his willingness to walk tall against corruption earned him national recognition. Inspiring books, songs and the famous Walking Tall movies. Join us as we explore the real life history of this larger than life legendary man.

Welcome to Talk with History. I am your host Scott, here with my wife and historian Jen.

Jenn: 00:01:43

Hello.

Scott: 00:01:44

On this podcast we give you insights to our history Inspired World Travels, YouTube channel Journey and examine history through deeper conversations with the curious, the explorers and the history lovers out there. Now Jen, this is one, this is a topic that I was like sort of aware of, but more because of Dwayne the Rock Johnson.

And if you guys don't know, what I'm talking about is there's, there's movies of Walking Tall. So Buford poster. Buford Pusser.

Jenn: 00:02:13

Yes.

Scott: 00:02:14

Cool name, cool name, but difficult to say. Like we, we both struggled all, all throughout making the video and the podcast was the sheriff, right. And we'll talk kind of about his background.

He got into this and what happened while he was doing a sheriff thing, but had multiple movies in the 70s movies was huge.

the rock movie which was like: 2004

So let's talk a little bit about this sheriff, this man, this six foot six giant person who was an athlete turned marine turned constable turned sheriff and kind of what he did here in Tennessee.

Jenn: 00:02:58

Yeah, I mean, so I had heard about him. I had people kind of tell Me about him.

My parents really loved this: 1973

But larger than life, gentlemen. So. But he's born in that area. Like he's born in McNary county and so he's from there. And he's kind of made his name, like you said, as an athlete.

There's a football player there, right. In a small town, you can imagine, big guy. He goes on to do the wrestling circuit. So he's called Buford the Bull.

He does that be the precursors to WWE when you would wrestle in arenas. And it was. It was kind of showmanship, but also athleticism at the same time. It helped to be tall, it helped to be big.

So that Buford the Bull name kind of followed him through that. But it's not forgiving on your body. And he had some issues with that and decides to go back home.

He's gets married to his wife Pauline, and brings his family back home and decides to get back into the law enforcement lifestyle. His father was in law enforcement. So he becomes a police chief for Adamsville, which is the town that he is from there.

And as he's doing that job is when he starts to see all the corruption in the town. And like Scott was saying, like the prostitution, the moonshining, the gambling, and it's pretty bad. And I know you're probably like, what?

In a small town. I know. And I think it was like they call it the Dixie Mafia or the Stateline mob. They. It was really like this Tennessee, Mississippi line.

And they're kind of skirting the law in both states here and no one's really holding them accountable. So it basically gets to kind of run rampant. And because of that and no. And they're buying off the police force. When he steps in to.

To fight it, I mean, he basically gets almost killed. And like Scott said, he's shot many times. There's a couple assassination attempts against him. So he becomes so upset and mad about this that he.

He fights the corruption back and he. He's. He's logging. He's helping clear land and log. And so he finds a really big stick, for lack of a better term, like almost like a huge bat.

Scott: 00:05:30

It looks like a. Almost like a small fence post.

Jenn: 00:05:33

Yeah. And he carries that around and he busts up like the stills, the moonshining stills and gambling rings.

And he's just busting things with this huge stick that, that becomes synonymous with his, his legend. And he's carrying the stick. Walking tall.

Scott: 00:05:49

Yeah. And what I, what I found interesting. Right. So he kind of has this journey of being born in the area, leaves.

I believe he joins the US Marines for a short stint and then he's like medically discharged or something like that, goes up to Chicago, does the kind of professional wrestling thing, gets married. So he's probably, his wife's probably like, hey, this professional wrestling thing isn't so good. Let's go join the family business. Right.

So heading back home, I wondered, and I don't know if this is addressed anywhere, if this Stateline mob had been going on for a while and his father was a sheriff before him. Did his father know? I mean, I don't know if that's ever addressed. And so that question pops in my head as I was kind of looking this up before.

Jenn: 00:06:36

Yeah. In the movie, it's kind of alluded to that they kind of turned their head the other way. And the father had done that, too.

Although the father knew it was wrong.

Scott: 00:06:48

Okay.

Jenn: 00:06:48

And he knew he shouldn't have been doing that. But the father was also past his prime.

Scott: 00:06:53

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:06:53

Yeah.

Scott: 00:06:53

He's on the tail end.

Jenn: 00:06:54

Yeah.

Scott: 00:06:54

Older.

Jenn: 00:06:55

And what happens with Pusser is he. He gambles, but they don't let him win, even though he should have won.

Scott: 00:07:02

Okay.

Jenn: 00:07:03

Right. And so he gets mad and he calls them out and they like, beat.

Scott: 00:07:07

Him up or something.

Jenn: 00:07:07

Beat him up. They give him a message.

Scott: 00:07:09

Gotcha.

Jenn: 00:07:09

That you will never win. Right. Like you're. This is. We run this town.

Scott: 00:07:14

So that, so that's when he kind of changes his mind. He's like, hey, I'm not just going to be a constable, just kind of like a B cop.

Jenn: 00:07:19

Yeah.

Scott: 00:07:20

I'm going to take over for what my father was doing before. Sheriff of the whole county.

Jenn: 00:07:24

Yes.

Scott: 00:07:24

And then he's like. Then he's just on this, like, warpath to clean up his neighborhood.

Jenn: 00:07:29

Well, they, they beat him up pretty bad. And they, like you said, the assassination attempts. And then they bring. He fights back vigilante justice. And so they take him to court for that.

Right. That he got you. He went and went after them and beat them up.

And the jury doesn't convict him, jury finds him innocent because he makes the plea that if you guys all see this and I'm trying to fight back, if you support me, I'll run for sheriff and I'll clean up this town.

Scott: 00:08:00

So. So that is, we, we Watched the rock movie.

Jenn: 00:08:04

Yeah. So it's kind of so.

Scott: 00:08:05

So the. In. You know, and I'll call it the rock version. In the rock version. That' kind of. That piece of. It happens. That is incredibly unbelievable.

Jenn: 00:08:15

Yes. But I think the town was so held under this, all this corruption. It was like the silent majority, right?

They wanted someone to clean up their town, but they didn't want to be the one to voice it because they didn't want their family to get hurt. So.

Scott: 00:08:31

So they found him innocent and then are like, hey, we're going to. We're going to put you in charge.

Jenn: 00:08:35

They elected him, have at it. And so what happens is he doesn't have anybody he can trust, Right? He doesn't have any deputies that he can trust.

So when you see him breaking up all these moonshining stills, it's like him and one other guy. It's like one other guy he could trust. And the two of them basically do this together. And, you know, it's.

It's the old story, like he's a big guy, he's six, six. But they come after his wife. They will kill his wife, right? They come after his family. They. He. That's when he gets shot at. So many times his.

His house, like, gets attacked. So it's all of these things like, they. They're not going to go down without a fight. And a lot of this is like a motel in.

Right on the border in: 1960

the woman who has the gun. In: 1960

that's when they shoot him in: 1967

ll kill his wife In August of: 1967

Scott: 00:10:02

No, no.

I was going to say, if I remember correctly, how they ended up killing his wife was he got a call to go somewhere and I think she was with him at the time.

Jenn: 00:10:12

Yeah, she wanted to go for a ride with him.

Scott: 00:10:13

She wanted to go for a ride. And so he goes out there and they ambush him. And they basically just kind of have these, like, automatic weapons.

I don't know what they are, but they're shooting up the entire car. So whoever's in the car, they're shooting.

Jenn: 00:10:26

Yep.

Scott: 00:10:26

His wife is one of them. She's killed. Is that when he gets, like, shot through the jaw?

Jenn: 00:10:31

Through the jaw, yep. So his face is all messed up. He has a lot of surgeries.

Scott: 00:10:34

And you'll see when we put it in the video, it's pretty incredible that he got. I mean, let alone getting shot like eight times, stabbed a bunch of times and all this stuff, but then getting shot through the face. He. And he.

I think I read he was in the hospital for, like, 18 days, required multiple surgeries to come back. Had scars for life, obviously, but was kind of still functioning and came back.

And, you know, I think I've read somewhere somebody called him the unkillable cop.

Jenn: 00:11:04

and he. He was sheriff until: 1970

The movie comes out in: 1973

Scott: 00:11:22

Yeah. And the reason I think that. That I read when I was looking before the podcast, that he wasn't elected sheriff again because they had term limits.

So he'd done three or four terms all in a row.

Jenn: 00:11:34

Yep.

Scott: 00:11:34

And so he had. He had done his last term. And so I guess what the people actually did is they saw, hey, this is his last term. So they wrote him in.

Jenn: 00:11:42

They did.

Scott: 00:11:43

They wrote him in. And that's. I don't think he was sheriff again, but that's why he got to be constable again. And so he kind of kept his.

He got to keep patrolling the streets and trying to keep things safe.

So he was making such an impact that the community was like, we're just gonna write because he wasn't allowed to campaign, but everybody else wrote him in, and that's how he kind of got to continue all the way to the very end.

Jenn: 00:12:05

Yeah, the people wanted him. And he really was a man of the people. He really was fighting for the people.

And so much so that his family was really put on the line through all of this. What's interesting is it starts to get recognition, especially after his wife is killed. It gets statewide recognition. He gets support from the state.

These people that are there, the mafia, the state line mafia, the Dixie Mafia, this crime circuit, like, they're not going down without a fight. So you can imagine how lucrative this must have been and how long it went on for.

For them to put up this much of a fight against a man who's bigger than life, who's getting all this attention and they're still fighting back.

Scott: 00:12:49

Yeah. And it was interesting because, you know, he gets national attention and all of a sudden they're, they're, they made a movie about his life.

Jenn: 00:12:55

Yeah, that's.

Scott: 00:12:56

This is why he's still alive.

Jenn: 00:12:57

This is why he's still alive and this is what makes him move into legend. Right.

So this movie, what's so interesting is this movie is made on a $500,000 budget and McNary county doesn't want them to film it in their county because they don't want that kind of, they don't want to look bad. The negative stigma in front of the nation. So it's filmed in the next county over.

So we go to that courthouse from the movie where he's walking out from the movie because it' not McNary courthouse, it's, it's the next county over and. But it's all filmed in Tennessee. It's all filmed in the general same area. And it goes on to make $40 million. Like it is a sleeper hit.

It's one of these things that moves into legend. People loved it so much. It's gritty, it's authentic. It's filmed there. Right.

And this the, the new actor, John Don Baker, who does a great job, who moves on into playing character actors and, and you would know him today.

Scott: 00:13:57

Yeah. For those watching, I'll flash his picture up on the screen, but you guys will recognize him for a fair amount of stuff.

Jenn: 00:14:01

So he does such a good job portraying this one man fight almost like this, like Robin Hood. Right. This man who is fighting back with the corruption with the long bat and taking on the whole town on his own, like.

ty, you know, it comes out in: 1973

He's actually asked to star in the follow up movie they're going to make. They make two more movies after this. And he's asked to star in the movie and he wanted to get some things right about himself.

And he's actually, he had met in Memphis that day and he's actually driving back from that meeting and he is. Went to the fair in town, driving home, right on the main street back to Adamsville and his car basically overturns and he dies.

d this Happen. But he dies in: 1974

And so this. It's never really finished. Like what happens with all of that? And now his house today is a museum.

Scott: 00:15:22

And they did a phenomenal job with that. So that's kind of where we went and where we did a good portion of our filming. And they.

I mean the nice thing about every now and this, with some of this more recent history stuff they have, when we go to these museums, they have like all the newspaper articles and they had a bunch of like downstairs they had a bunch of the movie memorabilia and stuff like that. They had a little video that we watched in the beginning which was entertaining. And so it was really neat to go there. We were in his home, right.

And there's a. There's like a cardboard cutout of him. Like that's how famous he was.

Jenn: 00:15:57

So I got to stand beside the cardboard cutout. You can see that. Six, six. I'm five, seven. So you can see the difference between us two. It is a lot like going to Graceland.

life in Middle Class America,: 1970

So it's the shag carpet, it's, you know, the greens, the olive greens, the wood paneling, walls. Yes. So. But it's his home. It's his furniture that's in there.

And like Scott said, you see a movie with people that knew him talking about what it was like to. To talk to him and, and be around him while he was doing all of this and kind of like what he would do.

Some real life stories of him protecting women who would be physically assaulted by their husbands and things like that and how those types of things. What was interesting to me is when Buford Presser is killed, Elvis Presley comes to his funeral. This is how well known this man is.

And Elvis Presley comes to his funeral but doesn't go because to the, to the cemetery because he doesn't want to take attention away from Buford Presser. So he sits in one of the kids's bedrooms and they actually have a little marker outside the bedroom that Elvis Presley sat in here.

And the daughter came back to check on him a couple times and the last time she came back to check on him, he had left through the back door. He just didn't want the attention. But Elvis Presley made a point to come there for the funeral of Buford Pusser. So that lets you know in the area.

And this was what, about an hour and a half?

Scott: 00:17:32

About an hour half. From Memphis.

Jenn: 00:17:33

From Memphis. So how well he's known in the area. So I thought that was very interesting. But like Scott said, they have a ton of family memorabilia there now.

His high school yearbooks, photographs of the family, wedding albums. And then downstairs, like a man cave.

Scott: 00:17:51

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:17:51

And they have a lot of stuff from the movie down there.

Scott: 00:17:54

It was neat.

Jenn: 00:17:54

Very neat. So it's. And it was very nice. The. The curator allowed us to film. She thought it was great that we were there.

She thought it was great that we were telling his story. It's now at 342 Buford street in Adamsville, Tennessee, and it is considered the Buford Pusser Museum. It's not open on Sundays.

It's only open Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

And what's neat is they have a little marker to him down the street, and they have a big water tower that even has his silhouette on it and says home of Buford Pusser. So they really have embraced this man in Adamsville, Tennessee, and he's died, gosh, over 50 years ago.

So it's just very interesting to be able to tell his story. Like Scott said, he's still influencing movies today. Walking Tall with the Rock.

Scott: 00:18:49

. It's kind of classic, early: 2000

Bunch of action. Things happen pretty fast. I think Johnny Knoxville is his sidekick.

Jenn: 00:19:04

Guy, the one person he can trust.

Scott: 00:19:06

retty big name actors in this: 2004

Jenn: 00:19:13

And when we watched it, it even in honor of Buford Pusser at the end, it actually says that. So you think of this man. He really did make a name for himself. And the movie became a cultural phenomenon, going from 500,000 to 40 million.

Even my parents love this movie. So when I had shown my mom pictures, she's like, walking tall. Like, she even knew where we were. And it's just so amazing.

In that era, that 70s era, people know this, this movie and know this man. So it was really neat to go there. We went to the museum, his home. We went to the marker where he died.

And then we went to the courthouse where they filmed a lot of the movie. And you even know this. John Don Baker will walk out of the courthouse. We. We did all of that and talked about it there.

All of this Is rural parts of Tennessee. And it was very beautiful area.

But definitely you can tell if there was corruption and if there was a crime ring, this would be the area, because you have all these back roads and all these places with moonshining could take place, where hotels could be hidden out and the debauchery could happen there. So I could understand how this would be an area where something like this could prosper.

Scott: 00:20:39

It was really neat to just be able to every now and then, do some more recent history, because I think it was the radio host, because you go on the local radio station once a month, and they had asked you if you had gone and visited that. And that was one of the reasons that we went out there and did this. And it was neat. It was really cool.

Jenn: 00:20:54

Yeah. He keeps asking me about it. So I just want to remind people, too, that they have just excavated Pauline's grave. So his wife's grave.

They excavated it in: 2004

And I think people were saying they were investigating to see how she was killed and to just verify that, because her case is still considered an open murder case. No one has ever been charged with her murder.

Scott: 00:21:25

Yeah, that's one thing I think I saw, too, is like, one of his things was he wanted to bring them into justice that killed his wife. And he never technically found the men that did that.

Jenn: 00:21:37

And so, yeah,: 2004

Now, Buford Pusser, again, was in an ox. It was an accident, and his car is at the museum. So if you want to see what's left of his car after that accident, they.

They actually garage it there so you can see it. Pauline is still an open murder case. So that was very interesting to learn about that. But it is. It's super cool to go and visit.

Scott: 00:22:15

It's fun.

Jenn: 00:22:15

And even when we were there, people were visiting.

Scott: 00:22:18

Like, there's more people there than I expected.

Jenn: 00:22:20

Yeah, I mean, I think, like I said, he's really a part of the American story, especially here in Tennessee, and one of those legends that has kind of become larger than life.

Scott: 00:22:29

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:22:29

So it was really neat to go.

Scott: 00:22:31

It was super cool. And that brings us to the end of our journey through the. The remarkable and often violent life of Buford Pusser.

From a towering figure who wrestled bears to the relentless sheriff who single handedly took on the criminal underworld of McNary County. Pusser's story is a testament to a fierce dedication to justice.

He left his mark on Adamsville and on American history, his legacy forged in courage and sacrifice. Join us next time as we delve into to another fascinating chapter from the annals of history.

And until then keep exploring, keep learning and keep walking tall.

Jenn: 00:23:10

Thank you.

Scott: 00:23:11

This has been Walk With History production. Talk with History is created and hosted by me, Scott Benny. Episode researched by Jennifer Benny.

Check out the show notes for links and references mentioned in this episode. Talk with History is supported by our fans@thehistoryroadtrip.com our eternal thanks go out to those providing funding to help keep us going.

Thank you to Doug McLiverty, Larry Myers, Patrick Benny, Gale Cooper, Christy Coates and Calvin Gifford. Make sure you hit that follow button in that podcast player and we'll talk to you next.