Murders Around Mississippi

In the small cotton town of Glendora, Mississippi a black service station attendant and father of four children was killed in December 9f 1955 by a friend of J. W. Milam (one of two murderers of Emmett Till). Elmer Kimball murdered Clinton Melton and then nineteen days later, Melton’s young wife was killed, only a week before Kimball’s murder trial opened.

Clinton Melton was murdered four miles from where Emmett Till’s body was dumped into the Tallahatchie River earlier in August. Kimball had lived in Glendora for a short time, managing a local cotton gin, and had an account at the gas station where Melton worked.

The murderer of Clinton Melton was tried and acquitted by an all-white jury. Mrs. Melton was driven off the road and into a bayou, where she drowned a week before the trial. She had been gathering information on her husband's murder. The two children in her car survived.

A Record from the Sovereignty Commission files