Murders Around Mississippi

The best history comes from first-hand, truthful accounts. In Mississippi, this is so important because so many people have been senselessly killed – too many of them already forgotten. Twenty-three-year-old Mack Charles Parker, a black truck driver from Lumberton, was accused of raping a white woman (his long time girlfriend). Witnesses had seen the couple together in the past, but on April 25, 1959, Parker was taken and dragged by a lynch mob from the jail in the rural logging town of Poplarville and shot to death on a river bridge north of Bogalusa, Louisiana three days before his scheduled trial date.

Here is a personal account given by Willie L. Robinson:

One of the very few times I remember disobeying my mother was on the night of April 24, 1959. It was a Friday night. I was a fifteen year old ninth grader at George Washington Carver High School in Picayune, Mississippi at the time. It was prom night at Carver High, and I had cleaned up the blue suit that I had bought the year before for less than $15.00 at the Boston Clothing Store to wear for my eighth grade graduation, and I went to the prom. I had neither an invitation nor a date. To be honest, I don't know why or how I was there, but no one asked me to leave; and to the best of my memory, I had a good time.

Prom activities in the school gymnasium ended around midnight or 1:00 A. M., as I recall. I could have easily walked across Rosa Street to B-1 Weems Housing Projects and done as my mother had told me to do, "...get home time that thing is over!", or something like that. In stead, I got into a car with a bunch of adults and ended up about forty miles away on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in a night club. I don't remember who my adult running buddies were that night now, but they did not seem to be concerned contributing to the misbehavior of a minor.

Willie's story continues ...


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Believed to be in the lynch mob were a former deputy, a Baptist preacher, and the jailer. The local prosecutor refused to press charges and no one was ever indicted. Although Parker's abductors were well known and some admitted their complicity to FBI agents, the judge in the case, Sebe Dale – a white supremacist and member of the White Citizens' Council – encouraged the grand jury to return no indictments against the killers.

An FBI investigation took place only because “moderate” Governor J. P. Coleman called for it, after Parker’s body washed ashore several weeks later.

Click HERE to take a look at the FBI files (Freedom of Information Act, 370 pages).