Murders Around Mississippi

A young Cleve McDowell, first black to enter the Ole Miss (James Eastland) School of Law in 1963. The Justice Department refused any protection for him and within a few weeks, he was expelled, anyway. Students had been chasing him home welding guns. McDowell finished law school in Texas, fought and won to practice in Mississippi. He was shot and killed in his home in 1997. The District Attorneys office that covers Sunflower County still refuses to open his records to the public, after a judge issued a gag order 20 minutes after his body was discovered. Way too many questions surround this event. The fact that McDowell was gay has been used to put up a smokescreen around his death.

March 14, 1997: Civil Rights Attorney Found Dead

DREW, Miss. (AP) - A civil rights attorney who was the second black to attend the University of Mississippi was found shot to death at his home, and a judge immediately slapped a gag order on investigators.


Cleve McDowell, 56, was found dead in an upstairs bathroom early Thursday after relatives called police to say the door to his apartment was open and his car missing. Police continued to look for McDowell's Cadillac on Friday.

McDowell had been a public defender in Sunflower County for three decades. He was part of a group of black leaders organizing to pressure district attorneys and revive interest in many never-prosecuted cases in which blacks were killed for doing civil rights work. During the 1980s, McDowell was the executive field director of the Mississippi chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.


His story and many others are included in "Where Rebels Roost" Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited. Publication Date June 28.