Buford Hayes Pusser was born near Finger, Tennessee, on December 12, 1937, attended local elementary schools, and graduated from Adamsville High School in 1956. About a year later he moved to Chicago, where he worked as a die cutter, attended Worsham College, and wrestled professionally on weekends. There he met and married Pauline Mullens, who had two children from a previous marriage, Mike and Diane, and in 1961 Buford and Pauline had their only child, Dwana. His long struggle with illegal activity along the Tennessee-Mississippi state line began early in 1957, when he was severely beaten at a club there, and in January 1960 he was arrested for assaulting the owner of a club on the Mississippi side of the line but was found innocent at a trial in Corinth, Mississippi. His law enforcement career began in 1962 when he was appointed chief of police of Adamsville, Tennessee; he was later elected constable and then sheriff of McNairy County, serving three terms. During his first year as sheriff he was stabbed several times and, with his deputies, raided more than forty-two moonshine operations. In 1966 he shot and killed in self-defense the operator of a motel on the state line while investigating a robbery, and in January 1967 he was shot four times at point-blank range by two men he had stopped in the state line area. On August 12, 1967, while he and Pauline were on their way to answer a call to the state line area, they were ambushed on New Hope Road; Pauline was killed and Buford was seriously wounded but survived. In December 1968, after answering a call for help, he shot and killed a known murderer in self-defense when the man opened fire on him. In 1970 the Jaycees selected him as one of Tennessee's outstanding young men of the year. After signing a contract to portray himself in a sequel to the movie Walking Tall, he was killed in an automobile accident on Highway 64 west of Adamsville, Tennessee, on August 21, 1974. His experiences inspired three movies, a book, a television series, several magazine articles, and a Colt Commemorative Limited Edition handgun, and his memory endured as that of McNairy County Sheriff Buford Pusser.