Murders Around Mississippi

Ex FBI Agent Tells of Mississippi Murders

2011-06-02T17:28:00.000-05:00

EL DORADO, Ark. (AP) — The search was on for three missing young men in Mississippi during the August of 1964. FBI Special Agent Floyd Thomas was "right in the middle of it" on the search for the three individuals whose car had been torched some time before.

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NEW BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT

2011-06-02T16:53:00.002-05:00

Cash In On Diversity

Ebook Price: $3.99 USD. 32510 words. Non-Fiction by Susan Klopfer on May 31, 2011

Cash In On Diversity; How Getting Along With Others Pays Off is a practical guide written for business people, educators, health workers, lawyers, ministers, engineers, computer experts, students and all others who want to do a better job of relating to each other in their daily lives. Easy-to-read, storytelling approach. Includes a valuable glossary plus webinar script and more.

Learn more now -- read a FREE sample -- HERE!

2010-10-20T19:28:00.000-05:00

Follow me on Twitter
http://twitter.com/@sklopfer

The Tea Party Is All About Race; Huffington Post Writer Asserts

2010-03-22T23:12:00.006-05:00

Bob CescaPolitical Writer, Blogger, and New Media Producer writes:

Developed by Republican strategists like Harry Dent and Pat Buchanan during the rebuilding of the GOP in the post Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act era, the Southern Strategy's goal was to win over southern whites by demonizing blacks using subterfuge, dog whistles and coded language. As I mentioned last week, the late Republican mastermind Lee Atwater described the use of the Southern Strategy as being all about the use of "abstract" issues that imply race without explicitly using direct racial epithets or even the words "black" or "white."

Atwater described some of the abstract issues of his era as "forced bussing" or taxes, and framing these issues in a way that subconsciously fuels white resentment towards blacks, and serves to coalesce white votes around Republican candidates. After all, Republicans will readily admit that trying to win over black voters has been a lost cause since LBJ, so why not exploit that loss by playing to white racial bias and thus locking down larger chunks of the white vote?

Continued at Huffington Post
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New Book Announcement: Who Killed Emmett Till?

2010-03-15T09:35:00.005-05:00

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Save 10% this Month at Lulu. Click "Buy" and enter code "IDES" at checkout.

What Others Say About Susan Klopfer

"This [Who Killed Emmett Till?] is a well-written and fascinating book about a vicious lynching of an African-American teenager from Chicago while visiting Mississippi. His mother insisted on an open coffin for the services so that people could see what was done to her son. The author explains the history, demands justice, talks with some of those still alive who, as she says, "still had the story fresh in their hearts and minds." After you read this book, the events will live in your heart and mind too, because she makes it come alive. This is highly recommended." Bernard Farber

"Susan Klopfer, the leading authority on the history of the Mississippi civil rights movement ... Thank God for enterprising historians like Susan Klopfer who have the courage to state the obvious."

"The Iowa historian’s master work, Where Rebel’s Roost: Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited, demonstrates how opposition to the Massive Resistance movement in Mississippi during the 1950s and 60s led inevitably to harassment and, in most cases, financial ruin." Alan Bean, Ph.D., Friends of Justice

"An amazing achievement. By far the most comprehensive guide to Mississippi's unsolved civil rights murders." Tom Head, Mississippi activist and About.com Guide to Civil Liberties

" ... an absorbing and substantial work that speaks in many provocative ways ..." Lois Brown, director of the Weissman Center for Leadership and Liberal Arts, Mount Holyoke College

"Susan Klopfer is determined to tell the truth about Mississippi and about America ... Klopfer follows the money, showing how the lines of culpability lead into the offices of New York industrialist Wycliffe Draper, whose Pioneer Fund fueled Mississippi's fight against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and provided millions of dollars for the private academies, established to keep white children out of integrated schools after Brown v. Board of Ed. (More recently, the Pioneer Fund financed the research for the controversial book, The Bell Curve, a best selling, racist tract published in 1994.)" Ben Greenberg, poet, essayist and activist and author of the blog Hungry Blues

"You won't be ready to stop reading until you finish and then I read it several more times. It's a part of history that I lived through and the story just hasn't been told like this before. Her interviews and descriptions made me feel like I was there both during and after. I have a feeling I'm still not ready to put this book down." Elizabeth L. Smith, Newbet's Choice

"Susan Klopfer has conducted in-depth personal research for her civil rights writings. She has walked the land where these atrocities occurred and still occur. Susan has experienced the pain and secrecy felt in these stories as she conducted first hand interviews with relatives of victims. All well worth reading, Susan Klopfer tells it like it is, and like it was." Pat Fua, librarian, White Pine High School

"It was gripping, frightening and sad...Thank you for educating this community." Gayle Tiede, Mount Pleasant Public Library."

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Author of Till Book Investigated by Glenn Beck

2010-03-11T17:44:00.000-06:00

Mississippi Woman Could Go To Prison For life For $11 Robbery

2010-03-10T17:21:00.003-06:00

The nightmare began on Christmas Eve in 1993 when Rasco's two daughters, Jamie and Gladys Scott, left a mini-mart near their home in Scott County, Mississippi. Their car broke down, and they hitched a ride from two young men, one of whom they knew. But later that evening, the men were robbed at gunpoint by three teenagers in another car. The robbers got away with an estimated $11 and no one was hurt, but police accused the Scott sisters of setting the victims up.

Keep reading ...

Who Killed Emmett Till? Author Answers Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

2010-02-28T11:52:00.002-06:00

Whenever I speak about Emmett Till and other Mississippi murders, I get interesting questions from audience members. Here are several ...

Q. Is the Emmett Till story still important? Do people still care?

A. Emmett Till's murder took place over 54 years ago, back in 1955, and yet we are just beginning to learn the details of the crime. Till was a young man known only by his family and friends, but the truth of his lynching remains an important key to understanding American history. Further, the truth about young Till's murder and the truth about the murders of so many others — including President John F. Kennedy, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy — is crucial to maintaining our democracy, because in a free government ... truth matters.

In each of these murders, there have been numerous threats to the uncovering and exposure of the truth. These threats have often come from within our own government, through such programs as COINTELPRO, a secretive series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), officially from1956 to 1971.

While the FBI's COINTELPRO was aimed at "investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations" around the entire country, Mississippi had its own such secret spy agency, the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission. This Commission spied and disrupted, with the help of the Ku Klux Klan, those people who aided in black voter registration and racial integration.

The Sovereignty Commission was formed only one year after Emmett Till's death, the same year as COINTELPRO, because of the pressure the state was receiving from the federal government. Former FBI and military intelligence agents were hired by Mississippi and used as Commission investigators. Ironically, the very federal government that was applying pressure on Mississippi to change, was also using the FBI and COINTELPRO to disrupt many people and organizations trying to bring positive change to the state, often tagging these people as Communists or simply dangerous.

Thanks to people who care about historical truth, their research on Emmett Till, COINTELPRO and the assassinations of our country's peace-seeking leaders continues to bring out new evidence. And as this truth becomes apparent, it serves to keep us free.

Yes, Emmett Till's story still matters. And as the 83,000 "Emmett Till" entries listed on Google as of 11:34 p.m. September 26, 2009, attest, the Emmett Till story continues to hold an important place in history. The story of 14-year-old Emmett Till remains important and people still care. Thank God.

Q.What kind of a boy was Emmett Till?

“I would say that to me, Emmett was very ordinary. But as I look at today’s youth, I realize that Emmett was very extraordinary,” his mother once told historian Devery Anderson who interviewed Mrs. Till Mobley in 1996. She described her son as responsible and industrious, a youngster who helped her clean, cook and do laundry, recognizing the importance of his help as a single mother. Anderson’s site is at emmetttillmurder.com.

In her book, Emmett’s mother gives a further glimpse of her son, however. “Emmet was always so confident about his ability to talk his way through things that you could forget that he still had a problem talking. After he had recovered from polio as quickly as he had done, at such an early age, the doctors figured he could lick this problem [stuttering], too And we did everything we were supposed to do. The speech therapy classes had helped some, but the stutter was still apparent at eleven and then at twelve, in normal conversation, but especially when he got excited.” Later, she also terms her son as “meticulous” and “independent.”

Young Emmett had just finished the seventh grade at the all-black McCosh Elementary School on Chicago's South Side when he went to Mississippi. He was between five-foot- four and five-foot-five and weighed 160 pounds, was physically stocky and muscular. Various authors write he was self-assured despite a speech defect--a stutter that resulted from a bout with nonparalytic polio at the age of three. Emmett was a smart dresser with a reputation as a prankster and a risk taker.

Q. What happened to Emmett Till’s father?

Louis Till, drafted in World War II, was convicted of raping two women and killing a third. He was executed by the U.S. Army, which originally told Till's wife, Mamie, only that he had been killed due to "willful misconduct.

One Chicago woman, J. Marie Green, a military retiree who studied black history and is an independent civil rights researcher, remembers Till’s murder and has spent years investigating what happened to his father. She wrote this comment on my blog, www.whokilledemmetttill.com:

“Emmett Till’s murder is something one never forgets. I was born and raised in Chicago, and was about five years old when he was killed and remember when it happened and saw the Jet magazine photos, and I was scared to death, shocked really and questioned my mother who was from Greenwood, Mississippi, asking her why would two grown men would kill a child and what is a "wolf whistle", and are these men coming after us? “She assured me that these men where not coming to get us, explained what a "wolf whistle" was and meant in relations to that, and as a side bar note, told me that I ask too many questions. (smile). But every child in our area was afraid for a long time. Over the years I have never forgotten him, and have read just about everything I have come across about him every time his name is mentioned somewhere. Just recently his name came up again, with the incident at Burr Oak Cemetery. Somehow I feel his death is not resolved.

“…Mrs. Till’s husband's story is another whole story all by itself. Pvt. Louis Till was part of the 177th Port Company, 397th Battalion — an all-"negro" battalion — which left from a NY port and arrived in France during 1944. He was hanged by execution by the U.S. Army on July 2, 1945. by orders of General Eisenhower. Allegedly for the murder of Anna Zanchi, and the rape of Benni Lucretzia and Frieda Muri who lived in Civitavecchia, Italy, these crime supposedly occurred on June 27, 1944, shortly after he arrived, mind you!

“According to records found at The American Battle Monuments Commission, Pvt. Louis Till is buried in an unmarked, prohibited, isolated area of Oise-Aisne Cemetery in Fere-en-Tardenois, France. The military marked his personnel file and the courts-martial records "secret," hushed it up, sent Mrs. Till a telegram, stating that her husband had died because of "misconduct," and she never knew what happened to him until her son's trial, when the Senators pulled some strings and contacted the military and some Staff Judge Advocate General, crossed out the word "secret" and released the information to them.

“Even after the trial of Emmett, she could never get any answers to what happened to her husband and why he was killed, this is clearly a military "railroad job," and has been hushed up all these years for a reason, but if you would check military history during this period you will see that a lot of black men were mysteriously hung for rape of French women. "They" took racism right on with them and convinced the French that "Negroes" had a problem, too.”

Q. Why do people sometimes refer to the University of Mississippi as Ole Miss?

The University got its nickname "Ole Miss" via a contest in 1897. That same year, the student yearbook was being published for the first time. As a way to find a name for the book, a contest was held to solicit suggestions from the student body. Elma Meek, a student at the time, submitted the winning entry of Ole Miss. This name was chosen not only for the yearbook, but also became the name by which the University is now known.

Ole Miss, as used by the University, is not a substitute for "Old Mississippi." Rather, this endearing term stands for the wife of the "Ole Massah" on a plantation (the man who enslaved and mistreated Africans).

U of Miss. publicity agents claim the name is thought of in an affectionate manner, today. To check this out, I walked around the campus one day and asked some of the black students what they thought about this nickname and its history. Most were well aware of the story and several said they were disgusted. “It’s just embarrassing,” one student said. “I wish the school would change it.”

Q. Who is your favorite Mississippi hero?

Reading The Fire Ever Burning by Constance Curry and Aaron Henry helped get me started on this journey. Henry was a true hero and someone I would have wanted to know.

Henry was a fierce champion of civil rights, a leader of the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP and a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives. He is still one of the most revered civil rights leaders in Mississippi, at least by many older civil rights advocates who know their state’s history.

Henry grew up near Clarksdale, Mississippi, and later earned a degree in political science at Xavier University in New Orleans. During World War II, he served as a staff sergeant with the U.S. Army in the Pacific. After the war, Henry attended pharmacy school, and eventually returned to Clarksdale to open a corner drug store where any important civil rights and government leaders met to unite Mississippi blacks in fighting white supremacy. Sadly, the pharmacy no longer stands in Clarksdale. His home was also demolished in a fire.

There were many personal tragedies in Henry’s life as well as successes. In 1961, Henry led a highly successful boycott of stores in the Clarksdale, Mississippi, area that refused to hire black workers and discriminated against black customers. He and six others were arrested for “conspiring to withhold trade.”

These charges were eventually reversed on appeal but another charge, of sexual harassment, against Henry, soon followed came soon after. While he was fighting this case, which he eventually won, his pharmacy was firebombed and his wife, Nicole, was fired from her job as a public school teacher. Several years later, Medgar Evers was assassinated in 1963 after taking Henry to the airport.

For Henry, there was no such thing as a small victory and because each victory usually led to an even greater success. "I think," Henry once said, "that every time a man stands for an ideal or speaks out against injustice, he sends out a tiny ripple of hope."

After the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the number of black voters grew rapidly and as African Americans began to be elected winning elections to various local, county and statewide offices. Henry was elected to serve in the State House of Representatives in 1982, a post he held until 1996 where he continued to fight against racial injustice.

Henry introduced legislation to remove the Confederate battle flag from the state flag and continued to call for the reopening of the murder case for his old friend, Medgar Evers. Aaron Henry suffered a stroke in 1996, and died on May 19, 1997 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, just two months and five days after the murder of his friend, Cleve McDowell.

Q. Can I see a movie about Emmett Till

Yes, thanks to Keith Beauchamp, a young man who saw the photograph of Emmett Till's brutally beaten face that ran on the cover Jet magazine and became a civil rights activist in 2004. Beauchamp directed The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till that is available on DVD. Till's murder has yet to be solved and Beauchamp said he is committing his energy to solving this and other civil rights cold cases. We owe him our extreme thanks and appreciation for his tenacity, perseverance and dedication to the cause of civil rights.

Q. What’s happening these days in Mississippi?

Many activities are going on — some good and some disgusting. Friends of Justice is a nonprofit organization working to uphold due process for all Americans with the goal of building a public consensus behind equal access to justice and respect for human dignity in our criminal justice system, according to Executive Director, Dr. Alan Bean.

Friends of Justice formed in response to the infamous Tulia drug sting of 1999 in which 47 people, 39 of them African Americans, were rounded up based on the false testimony of an undercover agent, he explains.

The unique group emerged as a coalition of defendant’s defendants' families and other concerned citizens who believed the defendants were being prosecuted on faulty evidence. "Because of the work of Friends of Justice, the Texas Legislature passed the Tulia Corroboration Bill, which has led to the exoneration of dozens of innocent people by raising the evidentiary standards for undercover testimony."

Learning from their experience in Tulia, Friends of Justice started organizing across Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi.

"We launch narrative-based campaigns around unfolding cases where due process has broken down, and empower affected communities to hold public officials accountable for equal justice. For more on our work, check their blog at http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/blog/

A wrongful conviction in a murder trial recently actually brought FOJ to Mississippi. In July 1996, four people were killed execution style at a Montgomery County furniture store: owner Bertha Tardy, bookkeeper Carmen Rigby, and two hired men, Bobo Stewart and Robert Golden. Golden was black, the other three victims were white. Six months later, Curtis Flowers, a young black Winona resident - who had worked three days for Bertha Tardy - was arrested and charged with the brutal murder of four innocent people.

Thirteen years, $300,000 and five trials later, Mr. Flowers remains behind bars and during which the state has been unable to obtain a final conviction.
Dr. Bean’s group believes that the state’s theory of the murder crime accused of a Winona company's former worker, by Flowers, "... doesn’t fit the actual evidence, and the state manufactured phony evidence by manipulating, badgering and bribing witnesses." Details of the Curtis Flowers case are shared at the FOJ website in a story titled, "A brief primer in wrongful conviction. You can find more at www.friendsofjustice.com.

A similar but unrelated ongoing case occurred three years earlier on December 24, 1993 when Scott County Sheriff's Department arrested sisters Gladys and Jamie Scott for an armed robbery they in which they vehemently deny participation in. In 1994 they were convicted after being implicated in the crime by three young black men who confessed to the robbery in exchange of a plea bargain that gave them 10 ten months. The sisters were not offered a plea and went to trial, each receiving two life sentences for a crime that netted 11 eleven dollars where no one was injured.

Don’t think these cases happen only in Mississippi. Another comparable case involves an Illinois social justice group seeking 11,000 signatures to present a petition to Illinois Governor Pat Quinn to order DNA testing to exonerate Johnnie Lee Savory.

Convicted of double murder by an all-white jury in 1977 at the age of fourteen, Johnnie Savory served thirty years in prison for a crime he did not commit, the group asserts. Released on parole in 2006, Savory still had not been officially exonerated by fall of 2009. After his release from prison, Johnnie attended a play about Emmett Till and found himself overwhelmed with emotion as he related to the horrible fate of another innocent fourteen-year old child. Johnnie’s deep connection to Emmett was cemented when he discovered that they share the same birthday, July 25th.

Johnnie and Emmett’s cases both represent a state-sponsored denial of justice and the loss of innocence for children, for communities of color, and for our entire nation, committee members said.

"However, these stories also are a part of a collective story for change, they contribute to the struggle for justice. Emmett’s death sparked change in this nation and his mother ensured that his legacy lives on for eternity. While Emmett’s voice was silenced, the strength and courage of so many in the civil rights movement allowed for their collective voice to be heard and heeded."

Also happening in Mississippi...

Even though the cold case is very famous, most Mississippi students have never heard of Emmett Till. And they haven’t been taught about the 1964 Freedom Summer when 1,000 volunteers swept into the state to register black voters.

Students haven’t heard of Fannie Lou Hamer or the story of Mae Bertha Carter, who defied gunfire and the loss of employment to send her children to previously all-white public schools in Drew, eventually winning a legal battle that confirmed their right to be there. “They don't know about ordinary citizens who faced extraordinary odds to bring change,” wrote Carmen K. Sisson, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor in the October 4, 2009 edition.

“But they're going to know all about it soon. In a groundbreaking reform — believed to be the first in the nation — Mississippi will require civil rights as part of its U.S. history curriculum. McComb schools made that move in 2006; but starting next fall, the stories of the civil rights era will be taught — and tested — in all public schools.”

This is going to be tough. But if Mississippi allows outside historians to participate and leaders refused refuse to be compromised, and if truth is the bottom line, the education program could set an example for the rest of this country.

Most states have their own civil rights histories that have not been covered. The stories are hidden and some might quite possibly just as horrid as what happened in Mississippi, especially in the western states where genocide was practiced on Native Americans and on the eastern seaboard where many wealthy families made their fortunes from the slave trade.

Even in my own (current) state of Iowa, the incarceration rate of blacks compared to the incarceration rate of whites is the highest in the nation. There is plenty of history to be researched and acted upon. Good jobs abound for citizen journalists.

Q. Why is it so important to think so much about the past?

I like to remember a quote by Winston Churchill, what he had to say about the importance of knowing our history: “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”

Q. Is there anything else important to know about all of this?

Unfortunately, there is something else that must be addressed. Old-fashioned Citizens Councils still meet around Mississippi and some politicians openly say it is perfectly acceptable to become members and attend meetings and special events.

When questioned about these organizations and their memberships, they slip slide away, typically answering they don’t agree with everything the councils stand for but they “do lots of good things, too.”

Q. Where can I find more books and more information about civil rights history in Mississippi?

Go to my blog, www.whokilledemmetttill.com where I’ve posted my Selected Biography, a link to lists of Mississippi victims of lynching and murders and a link to a growing civil rights library. This book has been recorded as an audio book and has also been published as a print book. Links to these versions are at the Emmett Till website mentioned above.
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Video Trailer on FBI Cold Cases

2010-02-25T09:02:00.000-06:00

Excellent video trailer on the cold cases project.

Today in the American South, scores of civil rights murders remain unsolved, uninvestigated, unprosecuted, and untold. Those two legacies of violence and silence still haunt the region and continue to damage race relations in the United States.

Many histories have been written about the struggle for civil rights; many documentaries have been made about the movement and the resistance that rose up against it. But the history of the South and of the United States still has huge, important, undocumented holes where myths and mysteries reside, threatening to undermine the nation’s goal of putting racial conflict behind.

The Civil Rights Cold Case Project is an unprecedented collaboration bringing together the power of investigative reporting, narrative writing, documentary filmmaking and interactive multimedia production to reveal the long-neglected truth behind unsolved civil rights murders, and to facilitate reconciliation and healing.

Boston Investigator Says FBI Cold Case List Lacks Names

2010-02-24T04:51:00.001-06:00

Ben Greenberg of Boston, a journalist and blogger investigating the Feb. 28, 1964, killing of Clifton Walker, north of Woodville, said he’s run across seven names in his research that don’t appear on the FBI list and weren’t cited by Burnham’s research. “And there might be more,” he said.

Three of those – Lula Mae Anderson, Eli Jackson and Dennis Jones – were found dead in a car in December 1963, not far from Poor House Road, where Walker is believed to have been killed by Klansmen….

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Important Links

2010-02-23T15:23:00.001-06:00

Downloads: Media Kit

Links: Online Media Release, WKET?

Radio Interviews: Interview with Tanner & Moore, KRUU FM, Feb. 2010

Radio Interviews: Pacifica Radio, Houston June 26, 2005

Radio Interviews: Pacifica Radio, Houston July 10, 2005

Radio Interviews: Writer's Voices, Monica Hadley

Radio Interviews: Blog Talk Radio, WE All Be Radio With Ron Herd

Downloads: Book Chapter Samples

Downloads: Sample Audio Clips WKET

Order: Where Rebels Roost

Order: e-book, Who Killed Emmett Till

Order: Audio Book, Who Killed Emmett Till?

Susan’s Twitter Page

Blog: Who Killed Emmett Till?

Blog: Selected Bibliography, Emmett Till, Civil Rights

Blog: Civil Rights News Releases

Blog: Civil Rights, Delta Blues

Blog: Civil Rights Stories

Blog: Mississippi Sovereignty commission

Susan’s Books For Film Blog Page

Facebook Group: Civil Rights Cold Cases

Civil Rights Bookstore

Online UStream Channel

Cold Case Deserves FBI Attention; Is the Dept. of Justice Too Lazy to Investigate Deaths of Birdia Keglar and Adlena Hamlett?

2010-02-17T09:42:00.002-06:00

Suzanne Goldenberg of the Guardian writes:

This is a Mississippi story. On January 11 1966, a gold-toned Plymouth Fury carrying a group of voting-rights activists crashed on a stretch of road near the small town of Sidon in the west of the state. Two African-American women, Birdia Keglar and Adlena Hamlett, were killed on that day. That much is certain. But in their deaths is buried a painful question that has gnawed at three generations of their families. Was this an ordinary car wreck, or were the two women, who had previously been threatened, shot at and burned in effigy because of their efforts to register black voters, targetted on that road? Engineered car crashes were a known tactic by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi in the 1950s and 60s. Violent crimes against African-Americans were rarely investigated or punished. And even if the women were murdered by white supremacists, was it better, as some members of Keglar's own family believed, to leave such suspicions left unspoken?

Continued --

Friends of Justice: Lend a Hand

2009-12-28T15:58:00.003-06:00

Have you contributed to Friends of Justice? I just made a small donation via PayPal and ask that you consider helping this important organization, too.

Friends of Justice is a nonprofit organization that works to uphold due process for all Americans. The organization's goal is to build a public consensus behind equal access to justice and respect for human dignity in our criminal justice system.

Friends of Justice formed in response to the infamous Tulia drug sting of 1999 in which 47 people, 39 of them African Americans, were rounded up based on the false testimony of an undercover agent. Friends of Justice emerged as a coalition of defendant’s families and other concerned citizens who believed the defendants were being prosecuted on faulty evidence. Because of the work of Friends of Justice, the Texas Legislature passed the Tulia Corroboration Bill, which has led to the exoneration of dozens of innocent people by raising the evidentiary standards for undercover testimony.

Friends of Justice is currently working on a wrongful conviction case in Winona, Miss., the same town where Fannie Lou Hamer was raped and beaten...

You can learn more by clicking HERE.

New Black History Book: Who Killed Emmett Till?

2009-12-22T08:20:00.002-06:00

New Book Announcement: Who Killed Emmett Till?
by Susan Klopfer

What others are saying about Susan Klopfer’s civil rights books

"Susan Klopfer, the leading authority on the historiy of the Mississippi civil rights movement ... Thank God for enterprising historians like Susan Klopfer who have the courage to state the obvious." Alan Bean, Ph.D., Friends of Justice

"An amazing ... guide to Mississippi's unsolved civil rights murders." Tom Head, Mississippi activist and About.com Guide to Civil Liberties

"... an absorbing and substantial work that speaks in many provocative ways ..." Lois Brown, director of the Weissman Center for Leadership and Liberal Arts, Mount Holyoke College

“Susan Klopfer is determined to tell the truth about Mississippi and about America.” Ben Greenberg, poet, essayist and activist and author of the blog Hungry Blues

Other books by Susan Klopfer
Where Rebels Roost, Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited
The Emmett Till Book How Branson Got Started
301 Ways to Get Ahead (with Fred Klopfer)
At Ease With FoxPro
Abort! Retry! Fail!
The DOS Answer Book
Internet Success with Fred (with Fred Klopfer)
Who Killed Emmett Till? (Blog Book)

Learn more about Susan Klopfer at smashwords.com/profile/view/sklopfer

T.R.M. Howard; Book Signing; Linda Royster Beito

2009-07-08T21:43:00.002-05:00

Linda Royster Beito will appear for an author book signing and talk on the life of Mound Bayou's Dr. T.R.M. Howard: Mentor of Medgar Ever and Fannie Lou Hamer. David Beito is the book's co-author.

Time and Location: Friday, July 10, 6:00 p.m., Kemetic Institute, Mound Bayou, Historic Hwy 61, Across from the John F. Kennedy Memorial High School. For more information, call 205-292-2902.

For more photos on Howard's life, see here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/album.php?aid=2346376&id=27435697

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Location: Book Signing in Mound Bayou (July 10, 2009)

Why this blog?

2009-06-10T07:58:00.007-05:00

At left, relatives of early Tallahatchie County civil rights activist, Birdia Keglar, take part in a road-naming ceremony for the woman who was killed in January of 1966.

I've been asked why I started and maintain this blog. An answer is deserved, and here it is.

After living in the Mississippi Delta for several years, and using the time to write a book about the Delta's civil rights history, I wanted to keep up with related issues and so I started this Blog. Historically, Mississippi's civil rights history has been plagued with unsolved and questionably resolved murders.

Today, the FBI is finally investigating some of the civil rights cold cases from the 1960s and 1970s, including several in Mississippi. This really is not not good enough, because there are many more unanswered questions about people who were killed or who simply disappeared because of their race and/or their politics.

Who killed Adlena Hamlett and Birdia Keglar? The women were coming home from a Jackson, Miss. civil rights meeting on January 11, 1966 when their car reportedly swerved and went off the road and they were killed. But no police reports were filed. There are no official records of what happened that night. One short newspaper account accompanies a host of stories that are told by friends and others. None of the stories seem to match. Keglar was the first black person to register and vote in Tallahatchie County since the days of Reconstruction ended. Hamlett was a long-time teacher and civil rights volunteer.

Some Mississippians still question who assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers on June 12, 1963. Byron De La Beckwith, a fellow Mississippian, was arrested and eventually found guilty of this crime. But what about the men who used to talk brag about their own involvement in coffee shops in Greenwood, Miss., their laughter and whispered conversations overheard by waitresses? What is to be made of the stories still floating around the Delta by black people who knew and loved Medgar Evers? These questions are legitimate and deserve answers for the sake of history.

The murders of James Earl Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, three young civil rights volunteers killed in Philadelphia, Miss. in the summer of 1964, have never been adequately resolved. At least a dozen men living in and around Philadelphia are said to have been involved yet many are still living and only one person has ever been convicted and sent to prison, 79-year-old self-acclaimed white supremacist, Edgar Ray Killen. But why won't the state of Mississippi's attorney general bring anyone else to trial?

Who really killed Drew, Miss. attorney Cleve McDowell in March of 1997? The attorney who was mentored by Medgar Evers and James Meredith (first black student admitted to the University of Mississippi) was shot and killed in his home but the police reports have never been released. Do they exist? What about the court records involving the trial of the man convicted of McDowell's murder? Why won't the Sunflower County Courts release these records? What is there to hide? Were others involved? McDowell's autopsy records suggest others were part of the murdering team. Try finding a copy of this record (I have one!). The young man convicted of the murder later recanted. What ever happened to him?

What prompted McDowell to tell his best friends that he would be "next in line" after hearing of Alabama attorney- friend Henry S. Mims' strange death three years earlier? What happened to McDowell's personal computer soon after he was killed? His firearms? His civil rights records kept on various cases including the killing of young Emmett Till? How did the fire get started in his office six months later-- the fire that "destroyed" all of McDowell's investigative records? Why don't McDowell's colleagues want to talk about their old friend?

And what about Sam Block? This early civil rights leader from Cleveland, Miss. died suddenly in his California home in 2000. His body was immediately removed from his home, says his sister Margaret Block, and was embalmed before it could be examined by the county's medical examiner. Block's computer disappeared shortly after his death.

Even the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has strange Mississippi ties. Was the state's infamous long-time senator James O. Eastland involved? Seven years before JFK was assassinated, the magnolia state's Eastland met for the first time with Guy Banister, a controversial CIA operative and retired FBI agent in charge of the Chicago bureau.

Banister -- remember him as the man who "pistol-whipped" David Ferrie in Oliver Stone's film "JFK" -- was later linked to Lee Harvey Oswald and Eastland through the senator's Senate Internal Security Subcommittee or SISS (sometimes called "SISSY"). All SISS records, of course, are classified.

Questions surround the murder of a white, racist Mississippi detective who worked for Banister and was killed within the year after Kennedy's assassination. Private investigator John D. Sullivan of Vicksburg bled to death after he was "accidentally" shot in the groin. He was with a "friend" after they came home from hunting.

A former FBI agent, Sullivan had worked for Banister both inside the FBI and privately; he was a private self-employed investigator who often did work for hire for the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission (Mississippi's mini CIA); the private white Citizens Councils (the state's uptown Klan made up of bankers, physicians, ministers, etc.) of which he was an active member; and he often worked for Eastland's SISS, as had Banister and Lee Harvey Oswald.

So much to figure out and so little time! I am trying to capture as much history as possible about Mississippi civil rights murders before available information disappears. Also, the blog's purpose is to keep up with any current activity on the part of law enforcement to resolve these cases.

Black American Lives Viewed as 'Expendable'

2008-12-23T01:44:00.003-06:00

“Without Sanctuary” was shown in Atlanta in 2002 at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site and drew more than 175,000 people, three times as many as viewed it in New York.

Now the collection has been acquired by Atlanta’s Center for Civil and Human Rights, "an ambitious cultural and historical institution that has yet to break ground for its building and plans to open in 2011. The center aspires to emulate the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington in method, linking the civil rights movement to national and international issues of the day."

The victims of .. public hangings and burnings were sometimes accused of crimes. But they were often guilty of nothing more than seeking the right to vote, speaking truth to white power. Black business owners who challenged white supremacy in the marketplace were favorite targets.

The victims were sometimes killed after they had been marched through the black section of town — with a stop at the school for the colored — and fully exploited as a testament to black powerlessness. Lynching, in other words, was a method of social control.
Continued ..

Story of Joe Pullen; Murdered in Drew

2008-11-14T16:59:00.004-06:00

Tribute to Fannie Lou Hamer,civil rights activist, who often told the story of Joe Pullen

If we must die, let it not be like hogs: hunted and penned in an accursed spot! If we must die; oh let us nobly die…fighting back. – Claude McKay (1889-1948).

Historians now define the period from 1954 (the year of the Brown v. Board of Education decision) to 1965 as the Modern Civil Rights Movement. The African-American struggle for freedom and civil rights began long before Brown, however, and is a central part of U.S. history.

IN THE SMALL COTTON TOWN OF DREW, Mississippi the heart of the Mississippi Delta and birthplace of Archie Manning, some black elders still talk about a story passed down by their parents and relatives focusing on a 1923 gunfight raging into the early morning hours of December 15 between Joe Pullen, a tenant farmer and WWI veteran, and plantation manager W.T. Saunders.

The fight would turn out to be a watershed event in U.S. history.

Pullen shot and killed Saunders during an argument over money and then Pullen’s own life ended in a ditch at the edge of Drew when he was shot after an all-night gun battle.

The small town had buzzed with rumors that several dozen posse members were killed and possibly hundreds wounded before Pullen was taken down by machine gunners brought in from Clarksdale; some older Drew residents maintain that for years after the gunfight, a good number of people were using canes and displaying other signs of injuries received during the gun battle.

There are several versions of the Joe Pullen story, both written and spoken. In one account, nearly one thousand white men searched the swamps around Drew to find Pullen. The tenant farmer is said to have killed 4, 17 or 19 whites and wounded 8, 38 or 40 before he was machine gunned down. He either died immediately or was dragged through the streets and then killed.

Local news accounts of this event were few. The weekly Indianola newspaper carried one small paragraph on December 20, 1923 reporting that: “J. L. Doggett of Clarksdale and Kenneth Blackwood of Drew, posse men wounded Friday by negro, Joe Pullen, are reported as improving rapidly as could be expected.”

Associated Press reports offered more

Four men lost their lives in a spectacular gun battle which raged until 1 o’clock this morning between Joe Pullen, Negro tenant farmer, and a posse of several hundred men in the swamps of the Mississippi delta near Drew. Nine other wounded three probably fatally. Pullen was finally captured when four members of the posse stormed the drainage ditch in which he was entrenched. The Negro died an hour later from bullet wounds. The trouble started when Pullen’s employer came to his house to collect a debt.

Fannie Lou Hamer, well-known civil rights activist from Ruleville, often talked about the shoot-out that occurred when she was a child. Hamer said that Pullen’s body was dragged into town and that people cut off body parts to keep as souvenirs. “Mississippi was a quiet place for a long time [afterwards].”

While local press claimed that four white men had died “in defense of law and order,” Mrs. Hamer was told that Pullen had killed thirteen white men and wounded twenty-six others before dying.

L. C. Dorsey, a Ph.D. sociologist, remembered how as a young child living on a Sunflower
County plantation between Ruleville and Drew she heard from her father and relatives the story of Pullen. Dorsey said that her own father often did not receive the money due him as a sharecropper, and Dorsey believed the Pullen incident had much to do with his fear of questioning “the man” over money he was owed.

Pullen’s family protested to the President [Calvin Coolidge] who sent an investigative team “because the man had been in the service, and that was what his family talked about, that this man had served his country and this is how he was treated. He had done nothing wrong and had been killed for trying to defend himself against the crew,” Dorsey said.

Alabama historian, Nan Woodruff, author of American Congo, adds to the story that Sanders may have offered Pullen $150 to recruit families to work on the plantation, and when Pullen kept the money without providing the service, the fight began.

Woodruff terms Pullen’s gunfight another “watershed event” “much like the Elaine Massacre [Arkansas, 1919] as blacks challenged the structure of white supremacy throughout the 1920s.

“Black people with guns had always threatened planter authority, particularly when disputes
arose over crop contracts or merchant bills. Despite the threat of terror, black sharecroppers and laborers fought back when their lives were on the line, even if such actions resulted in their deaths.”

Woodruff and other black history researchers write that many Southern black people had always carried guns for hunting and self-protection, but the frequency of armed confrontations between planters and croppers, based on the frequency of reporting, may have increased in the decade following World War I.

THE RULING WHITE Delta families would keep their immense social, economic and political power; the planters’ bloc maintaining its supremacy or hegemony through an efficient capitalist economy rooted in black labor manipulation. Schooling and marriage built strong family alliances, and these white coalitions, much like Mafioso, expanded into local economies, from ownership and operation of cotton gins, to real estate, and banking.

Mississippi white planters simply ran all of Mississippi.

Roy Moore: FBI agent who pursued Ku Klux Klan killers

2008-11-11T06:04:00.002-06:00

Nothing in Roy Moore’s career could have prepared him for the challenge of protecting civil rights workers in the South. Born in Oregon in 1914, his early life was spent about as far from the Deep South as was possible for an American child. As a young man he served in the Marine Corps, before joining the FBI in 1938 as a clerk. In 1940he became an agent, progressing quickly through the ranks.

By 1960, Moore had been promoted to the “number one man” in charge of training and inspection at FBI headquarters. From there he was dispatched to the hottest spots in the Southern civil rights movement, ending up in Birmingham and then Mississippi. Here, Moore became determined to break the Ku Klux Klan. He offered one informant 25000, which led to the discovery of the corpses. His team found that 25 people had been involved in the plot, including two Neshoba County officers.
Continued --

Socialism: Code Word For Black

2008-10-28T15:47:00.002-05:00

Part II: Shame on McCain, Palin for using an old code word for black

By Lewis Diuguid, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

The PBS documentary, “Soldiers Without Swords” shows heroic scenes of black World War I and World War II soldiers and touching moments of black people celebrating in the streets of America at the end of the Second World War. Until that film debuted in the 1990s, I and a lot of African Americans had never seen such moving, memorable footage. It had been excluded from the history we studied in school and from the mainstream media.

So it is no surprise to me that tens of thousands of white people spoke with one thunderous roar against my Oct. 21 Midwest Voices blog post, criticizing Sen. John McCain and his GOP presidential running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, for dredging up the old “socialist” label to apply to their Democratic rival for the White House, Sen. Barack Obama.

I wrote that the word “socialist” had long ugly historical roots. J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, used the term liberally to label white and black leaders as “un-American” because they dared to fight for equality. The news media and eventually textbooks reported on white people who became enveloped in Hoover’s crusade against socialists and communists during the Red scare. But the stories of how the FBI damaged black leaders didn’t make the press just as the everyday and success stories of African Americans were excluded from mainstream coverage.

Continued --

Here's a Mississippi Sovereignty Commission Link with a "report" on Socialists ...

Emmett Till and Sean Bell Families Meet Oct. 30, NYC

2008-10-25T05:37:00.000-05:00

Sumner Mississippi, Tallahatchie County Courthouse seen from across the Cassidy Bayou

We're passing on this important invitation --

Families of Emmett Till and Sean Bell will meet for the first time celebrating the Learn My History Scholarship Project Award.

Attendees will hear unreleased important words from Simeon Wright, the cousin of Till, and watch a sneak peak of the World Premier screening of "Learn My History... From the Past to the Present" written and produced by Ronnique Hawkins of The ALM Foundation (Anti-Lynching Movement, now Learn My History) and a producer of "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till."

Hawkins will introduce this HISTORICAL event and film screening of her newest work that includes interviews with the families of Emmett Till, Sean Bell, Johnnie Mae Chappell, Frederick Douglass, The 3 Civil Rights Workers murdered in Neshoba County (Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney), Ida B. Wells, the re-united 'Central Park 5', Jam Master Jay, and various civil rights historians.

Her film also focuses on such late greats as Ossie Davis, and includes interviews with and/or mention of Carolyn Goodman, Dr. Adelaide Sanford, Ernest Paniccioli, Herb Boyd, sculptor Inge "Hands" Hardison, Cliff Frazier of the NYMLK Center, and various music icons including Afrika Bambaataa, Public Enemy, KRS One, and Ice T.

DATE: Thursday October 30th from 6-9 PM.

LOCATION: 3940 Broadway, New York, NY 10032 (between (165th & 166th st.) - Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial, Educational & Cultural Center.

Hawkins states that "Contributions are necessary to support this and future events for the preservation of our history. Entertainment and Refreshments complete the evening. Seating is limited, reserve yours soon."

(Learn more by clicking on this youtube video link at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGwK7qOqS_o (or go to Youtube.com and search: Emmett Till Learn My History.)

Requested Donation(if you mention this add) -

$25 for Adults - $15 for Seniors/Students/Teens.

Vending available, Thank you

Learn My History
PO Box 2435
New York, NY 10008

(212) 613-5787

Learn My History
PO Box 2435
New York, NY 10008

----Note-----

(The Sean Bell shooting incident took place in the New York City borough of Queens on November 25, 2006, in which one Latino and two African-American men were shot at a total of fifty times by a team of both plainclothes and undercover NYPD officers (two of whom were themselves African-American), killing one of the men, Sean Bell, on the morning of his wedding day, and severely wounding two of his friends.Three of the five detectives involved in the shooting went to trial on charges ranging from manslaughter to reckless endangerment, and were found not guilty.)

Students examine history of Delta’s civil rights era

2008-10-25T05:34:00.001-05:00

Penn. college students will compare struggles in U.S. South and South Africa

By ANDY ROSS
Staff Writer

Thursday, October 23, 2008 12:07 PM CDT

Around ten years ago Dickinson College history professor Kim Lacy Rogers traveled through Clarksdale and the Mississippi Delta seeking out stories from those who had lived through the Civil Rights movement.

Talking with black Mississippians from all walks of life, the oral history interviews Roger’s captured during that time culminated in 2006 with the publication of her book, Life and Death in the Delta: African American Narratives of Violence, Resilience, and Social Change.

Now, two years later, Rogers is headed back to Clarksdale. This time, however, the professor will be joined by seven of her students from the small school in Carlisle, Penn., each of whom will be comparatively examining the Delta’s racial history –– and current situation –– with that of another violent struggle for equality; Apartheid in South Africa.

Continued --

New Film: Murder in Black and White, Oct. 5

2008-10-02T16:05:00.000-05:00

A note from civil rights film producer Keith Beauchamp --

Dear Friends,

Please remember to watch, "Murder in Black and White" hosted by Al Sharpton Oct. 5th - 8th on TV One 10pm EST (9pm CST).

Sincerely,

Keith A. Beauchamp
Executive Producer/ Director
"Murder in Black and White"
http://www.tvoneonline.com/

Emmett Till Crime Bill Finally Passes Senate

2008-10-02T10:54:00.001-05:00

Sumner, Miss., site of the trial of Emmett Till's murderers. The Tallahatchie County Courthouse appears in the distance.Emmett Till,from Chicago,was visiting his uncle in the small cotton town of Money when he was murdered. The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, named for him, passed the U.S. Senate unanimously, Sept. 24.

by Ronni Mott
October 1, 2008

If there is any doubt that the wheels of power grind slowly, the U.S. Senate proved the point this week, when, after more than three years of delays, it unanimously passed the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, which will strengthen federal and local agencies’ abilities to investigate and prosecute unsolved civil rights era murders.

The act, which was first proposed in July 2005, after the Senate passed a resolution to apologize for lynching, passed in the House June 20, 2007, with nearly unanimous approval (422-2). Since then, it has languished for more than 15 months in the Senate due entirely to the “hold” put on the bill by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., which the Democratic Caucus’s Senate Journal Web site characterized as “petty procedural maneuvers.”

Continued in the Jackson Free Press

Park Honors Emmett Till; Remembering Clinton Melton

2008-09-17T08:09:00.001-05:00

The grocery store in Glendora, Miss., where Till whistled at the grocer's wife.

Emmett Till Park to open in Mississippi Delta town
By TIMOTHY R. BROWN | Associated Press Writer
1:53 PM CDT, September 16, 2008

JACKSON, Miss. - A 20-acre park and nature trail in memory of Emmett Till will open Friday in the tiny Mississippi Delta town of Glendora, almost 53 years to the day after an all-white jury acquitted two white men in the brutal murder of the black teenager.

The Emmett Till Memorial Park & Interpretive Nature Trail is an extension of a museum honoring the Chicago 14-year-old whose death helped bring national attention to the brutality of segregation. The park will include picnic pavilions, a baseball field and an outdoor stage.

Till was kidnapped Aug. 28, 1955, from his uncle's home in the rural community of Money after being accused of whistling at a white woman. Three days later, a fisherman spotted Till's mangled body in the Tallahatchie River.

The teen's body was unrecognizable, except for a ring. Till's mother insisted on a public viewing and funeral in Chicago. Pictures of the brutalized body shocked the world.

Story Continued --

Glendora is the same town where Clinton Melton was murdered, soon after the trial ended that found Till's murderers innocent.
* * *

Once the 1955 J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant trial ended in Sumner, Mississippi for the murder of Emmett Till, less than a month later in the nearby small cotton town of Glendora, a black service station attendant and father of four children was killed by a friend of Milam’s.

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.

Fourteen-year-old Till of Chicago was visiting relatives in the Mississippi Delta at the end of August when he was kidnapped, tortured and killed after he was accused of whistling at a white store clerk.

* * * * *
Check out the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission files at http://mdah.state.ms.us/arlib/contents/er/sovcom/
where you will find numerous files under Emmett Till and Clinton Melton.

* * * * *

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

On the day of the murder, Kimball, 35, was driving a car borrowed from his friend, J.W. Milam, one of the two men accused and acquitted of killing Till, when he drove to the gas station and asked for a fill-up. Melton’s daughter, Deloris Melton Gresham, was a toddler when her parents were killed, but she later was told what occurred at the service station:

"When Kimball drove up to the station, my father’s boss told my father to go out and fill up his car. But when he was done filling the car, Kimball went into a rage and said he only wanted a dollar’s worth of gas, and that he was going to go home and get his gun to shoot him. The gas station owner tried to talk him down, but couldn’t. He told him my father was a good negro and that he did not deserve to be hurt. He really pleaded with Kimball."

As soon as Kimball left, his boss told him that he had better leave, fast. But his car was out of gas and he had to fill it first. Kimball came right back and began shooting at my father. Another man was in his car with him, and yelled for him not to shoot. He jumped out of the car and ran into the station to hide. On arrest, Kimball claimed Melton shot at him first. McGarrh [the white owner of the gas station] denied this, adding that Melton did not have a gun at any time during the quarrel. A bullet hole was found in the windshield of Melton's parked car.

An angry Southern newspaper publisher, Hodding Carter, reacted to the murder of one of "Mississippi’s own," comparing it to the Till case in a Delta-Times editorial:

[Melton] was no out-of-state smart alec. He was home-grown and "highly respected.".... There was no question of an insult to Southern womanhood. There was only an argument about … gasoline. There was no pressure by the NAACP, "credited" with the outcome of the Till trial.... So another "not guilty" verdict was written at Sumner this week. And it served to cement the opinion of the world that no matter how strong the evidence, nor how flagrant is the apparent crime, a white man cannot be convicted in Mississippi for killing a negro.

LITTLE ATTENTION was given to the death of Gresham’s mother that occurred on or around December 21, 1955, approximately nineteen days after Clinton Melton was killed on December 3. Officially, her mother’s death was blamed on faulty driving. "Later, a relative told me that was not true, that everyone knew she was run off the road," Gresham said.

Gresham, a toddler at the time, recalled being trapped inside her mother’s car as it sank to the bottom of a murky bayou near Glendora. A relative driving by saved her life and that of her baby brother. But Beulah Melton drowned.

"My mother was a pretty woman, known for being bright and outspoken," Gresham said. "People who knew her have told me we are very much alike – both in looks and in personality."

Beulah Melton had been picking up information on her husband’s death and would have been a "problem" for Kimball at the trial, Gresham said.

From news accounts and the talk around Glendora, there was no provocation of her father’s killing. It was outright murder, according to white witnesses, including the white service station owner. The Melton family was well known in Glendora. Clinton Melton had lived there all his life and, "for once, white people spoke out against the killing of a negro. The local Lions Club adopted a resolution branding the murder ‘an outrage’ [and pledging to donate $400 to the family]," Myrlie Evers, the wife of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, later wrote.

Melton’s widow told Medgar Evers she feared justice would not be done if the NAACP interested itself in the case, and asked him not to become involved. "Her wishes were respected."

In a later investigation after her death, Medgar Evers discovered the club had given the widow only twenty-six dollars and that a local white minister had given her sixty dollars of his own.

Relatives took in Delores Melton Gresham and her siblings, and Gresham continued to live in Glendora with her grandmother. "My grandfather was so upset, he left Glendora and never came back."

Unlike some earlier Mississippi white on black murders, Kimball was charged for the murder and although not convicted, spent some time in jail:

Kimball Loses Bid for Freedom on Bond

Sumner, Miss. (AP) –December 28, 1955 – Elmer Kimball today lost his bid for freedom on bond while awaiting grand jury action on a charge of murdering a Negro man.

Three justices of the peace held a preliminary hearing for the white gin operator and refused bond. Officers returned Kimball to jail to await action of the grand jury which meets next March. The hearing was held in the little courthouse where the sensational Emmett Till trial was held. Bond usually is refused in cases where a person is accused of a crime which carries a possible death sentence upon conviction.

Kimball is charged with murder in the shotgun slaying of Clinton Melton, Negro service station attendant at nearby Glendora and father of four children. The accused man testified he fired in self-defense after someone shot at him three times. Kimball said he didn’t know who fired until he returned the fire and killed Melton.

Lee McGarrh, Melton’s employer, testified that Kimball fired without provocation, and Melton was unarmed. He said Kimball became angry at the Negro during an argument over gasoline for Kimball’s car. McGarrh said Kimball declared he was going home for his gun and [sic] kill Melton. ***

ONE WIRE SERVICE sent a staff member to cover the Kimball trial, and the only Mississippi newspaper that sent a staffer was Carter’s Greenville Delta Democrat-Times. Reporter David Halberstam remained in Mississippi after the Milam-Bryant trial and wrote as a freelancer.

This time cameras were barred, not only from the courtroom but also from the entire courthouse property, and no press table was set up. The sentiment [for conviction] was particularly strong in the Glendora community where Kimball shot Melton and where both the deceased and the defendant were well known, according to Halberstam: "Elsewhere in Talahatchie County, of course, it tended to become the usual matter of a white man and a black man."

Defining "Good" and "Bad"

Halberstam assessed the environment before the trial got started:

"A friend of mine divides the white population of Mississippi into two categories. The first and largest contains the good people of Mississippi, as they are affectionately called by editorial writers, politicians, and themselves. The other group is a smaller but in many ways more conspicuous faction called the peckerwoods.

"The good people will generally agree that the peckerwoods are troublemakers, and indeed several good people have told me they joined the Citizens Councils because otherwise the peckerwoods would take over the situation entirely. It is the good people who will tell you that their town has enjoyed racial harmony for many years, while it is the peckerwoods who may confide that they know how to keep the niggers in their place; it is the good people who say and mean, "We love our nigras," and it is the peckerwoods who say and mean, "If any big buck gets in my way it’ll be too damn bad."

"But while the good people would not act with the rashness of and are not governed by the hatred of the peckerwood, they are reluctant to apply society’s normal remedies to the peckerwood. Thus it is the peckerwoods who kill Negroes and the good people who acquit the peckerwoods..."

DESPITE HIS PLEAS of self-defense, Kimball was denied bond in two preliminary hearings. The biggest problem at the trial facing District Attorney Roy Johnson and County Attorney Hamilton Caldwell, according to Halberstam, was swearing in fair and impartial jurors [from] a group "sworn by birthright to protecting the interest and life of the white."

The state had produced three witnesses.

First was McGarrh, "a stern little man who was a member of one of Glendora’s most respected families." McGarrh, Halberstam wrote, stuck to the same story he had told at the earlier hearings.

"He said he saw Kimball shoot the unarmed Melton. He went unshaken under cross examination. The only weakness in his story is that although Kimball had given prior warning of his intention McGarrh stayed inside the station with his shot gun.’

The next witness was John Henry Wilson, "a Negro in whom Kimball said he had a great deal of confidence. Wilson did not witness the shooting, but he damaged the self defense theory. He was standing outside the station when Kimball returned with a gun. He asked Kimball what he was going to do.

"I’m going to kill that nigger," Kimball said. "Please, sir, don’t shoot that boy. He ain’t done nothing to you," Wilson said. "Get back or I’ll kill you too," said Kimball. Wilson ran to the back of the station."

The last witness for the state, George Woodson, testified that he was staning about ten feet away from the scene and saw Kimball walk around the side of the station with a gun, and that he did not see any gun in Melton’s hand.

"The defense lacked eye witnesses and thus tried to shake the testimony of the state’s witnesses. Its witnesses came up with only minor points," according to Halberstam.

"But more significant than their testimony were their positions—a sheriff, a deputy sheriff, and a chief of police."

Apparently Kimball did the most damage to himself when he got on the stand, as Halberstam told it:

"[He] got up there before those twelve Mississippians and told them a story about his relations with Melton that flatly contradicts all the Mississippi mores…. Kimball said he went inside and told McGarrh that Clinton was getting pretty nasty and asked him to total up his account and he’d be back and settle up; when he returned a few minutes later someone started firing at him, hit him, and he went back to his car and got his shot gun.

"Kimball’s story would be hard for any jury to believe, because they would know…. "[You] cannot provoke a Negro attendant to talk like that no matter how much you irritate him, particularly a trusted Negro such as Clinton Melton."

"The jury also knew that "no white peckerwood gin manager, the best friend of J. W. Milam, would let a Negro talk like that without doing a little whupping right there on the spot."

AFTER FOUR AND one-half hours, the jurors walked in and announced their decision to acquit:

Sumner, Miss. (AP) – Elmer Otis Kimball was acquitted of murder late yesterday in the shotgun slaying of a 33-year-old Negro. "I wasn’t sure justice would be done," said the 35-year-old white Glendora cotton gin operator, "but I should have known." A 12-man, all-white jury, made up mostly of farmers, deliberated more than four hours before freeing Kimball.

Two witnesses testified they saw Kimball blast Clinton Melton three times with a shotgun December 3 at a Glendora service station. Witnesses said the shooting was an aftermath of an argument between Kimball and Melton over gasoline to be put into Kimball’s car. Kimball testified that Melton cursed him during the argument. Defense Atty. J. W. Kellum said Kimball fired the fatal shots in self-defense. Kimball said three shots were fired at him before he opened fire, one wounding him in the shoulder. He showed a scar and brought in a doctor who verified the gunshot wound.

But neither Lee McGarrh, white owner of the service station, not George Woodson, Negro, who said he witnessed the slaying, said they saw or heard Melton fire. No weapon was found on Melton’s body or in his car. The trial took place in the same courtroom where half-brothers J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant were found innocent six months ago of the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, Chicago Negro. Kellum was one of five defense attorneys in the Till case.

****

Times were now more dangerous for Mississippi’s African Americans. One white Glendora resident, asked by a reporter for his opinion of both the Till and Melton murders told him "There’s open season on the Negroes now. They’ve got no protection, and any peckerwood who wants can go out and shoot himself one."

Clinton and Beulah Melton’s daughter never moved from the Delta. She keeps a picture of her mother who looks like she could be her twin. While she has never owned a picture of her father, Gresham said she would have liked to know him better and continues to question what happened to her mother on that frightening day.

Yet her story had a happy note. In 2003, Keith Beauchamp, a New York filmmaker, discovered a copy of an old newsreel showing the story of Clinton Melton’s murder. Beauchamp incorporated the reel into a documentary on Emmett Till, and made sure that Gresham had a copy for her family.

The following year, Beauchamp's documentary was shown on a Chicago television station, resulting quite by chance in one of Gresham’s brothers discovering his sister. A family reunion took place that summer.

"It was joyous," Delores Gresham said. "We talk to each other on the phone several times a week, and I’m meeting other relatives through my brother."

(An excerpt from "Where Rebels Roost, Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited," by Susan Klopfer. Copyright 2005 Susan Klopfer.)

Fifth Circuit vacates conviction of ex-KKK member tried for civil rights era killings

2008-09-11T07:20:00.000-05:00

A three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has vacated the conviction of former Ku Klux Klan (KKK) member James Ford Seale for his involvement in the 1964 deaths of two 19-year-old black teens.

The 71-year-old Seale has been in federal prison since his 2007 conviction.

AP has more.

House Apologizes; Jim Crow, Slavery

2008-07-29T21:36:00.001-05:00

WASHINGTON (AP) - The House on Tuesday issued an unprecedented apology to black Americans for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow segregation laws.

"Today represents a milestone in our nation's efforts to remedy the ills of our past," said Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Mich., chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

The resolution, passed by voice vote, was the work of Tennessee Democrat Steve Cohen, the only white lawmaker to represent a majority black district. Cohen faces a formidable black challenger in a primary face-off next week.

Congress has issued apologies before - to Japanese-Americans for their internment during World War II and to native Hawaiians for the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom in 1893. In 2005, the Senate apologized for failing to pass anti-lynching laws.

Five states have issued apologies for slavery, but past proposals in Congress have stalled, partly over concerns that an apology would lead to demands for reparations - payment for damages.
continued --

The Answer My Friends is ...

2008-07-07T09:25:00.001-05:00

from the Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Philadelphia, MS Civil Rights Murders:

Neshoba county again fails to indict others

3 years and 6 months after Killen indictment

Another month has passed and Neshoba County and the State of Mississippi have again failed to indict others in the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.
On January 6, 2005, a state grand jury in Philadelphia, Neshoba County, Mississippi returned the first-ever state indictment in the Neshoba murders case. Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen was indicted.
The grand jury heard testimony for less than one full day despite the fact that there were ten living suspects at that time. There was a massive amount of evidence against several of these suspects, including the 3,000 page transcript from the 1967 federal trial for conspiracy to deny civil rights.
That 1967 trial resulted in four of the suspects who were still living in 2005 being convicted. Why could not Neshoba County and the State of Mississippi at least indict them in 2005 on state charges?
And others should have been convicted in the 1967 federal trial.
Two of those suspects who were convicted on federal charges in 1967 are still alive now. Why cannot Neshoba County and the State of Mississippi indict them now? There was enough evidence to convict them on federal charges in 1967.

Why only Killen?

Why no more state indictments 3 years and 6 months after the indictment of Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen?

What's New? Nothing ...

2008-07-02T07:40:00.001-05:00

forwarded courtesy of the
Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Neshoba: "Why no news?" by Charlie Leck

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://chasblogs. blogspot. com/2008/ 06/letter- to-editor. html

Saturday, June 28, 2008
Letter to the Editor

Why no news?
by Charlie Leck

John Gibson, one of the organizers of the rally, memorial service and protest that I attended in Mississippi last week, writes to say the Neshoba Country Democrat, which purports to be a newspaper, gave the rally and protest no coverage. Its office is only two blocks down the street from where we (over 200 of us) gathered to remember Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman and a host of other civil rights workers who were killed.

"Just got through checking the internet edition of the Neshoba Democrat. No mention of the 44th Annual Mississippi Civil Rights Martyrs Memorial Service, but I didn't expect any from them. The justice rally at the Neshoba County courthouse involved around 200 people and was only a block from the newspaper office. I suspect you remember many similar non-coverage of civil rights activities that occurred back in the day. I guess the memorial service and the justice rally was not consistent with the message that the editor of the Neshoba Democrat wanted to promote.

"Why only Edgar Ray Killen prosecuted in the Neshoba murders case?

"Why no coverage of the 44th Annual Mississippi Civil Rights Martyrs Memorial Service by the Neshoba Democrat?"

John, why not organize a letters to the editor campaign, telling the editor and the general public what fine speeches and music they missed?

Here's some contact information for the Neshoba Democrat and a copy of a letter I sent off today (Friday, 27 June 2008):

Carver Rayburn
Associate Editor and Publisher
Email: crayburn@neshobadem ocrat.com

Debbie Myers
Managing Editor
Email: dmyers@neshobademoc rat.com

Jim Prince
Editor & Publisher
Email: jprince@neshobademo crat.com

Dear Editor:

I've enjoyed reading through your on-line archives. You feature many outstanding articles about the terrible civil rights murders in 1964 and a great deal of valuable subsequent information about the investigation and trials. Thanks for having that all posted.

I was disappointed, however, not to see any news coverage of the 44th annual memorial service and rally that took place last week end (21 and 22 June 2008).

I traveled down from Minnesota with my wife and one of my children to attend the events surrounding the memorial service. We gathered in front of the Neshoba County Courthouse on an absolutely spectacular, sun-shiny day in Mississippi. The music was grand and the speeches were eloquent and informative.

It appears that your paper did not have a representative at that gathering and I think it was a huge mistake not to. This is an important event to both many of the citizens of your community and veterans of the Mississippi civil rights movement all over America.

I urge you to give the event "close-up and personal" coverage next year and in ensuing years. The protestors at that event continue to wonder why it is that only Edgar Ray Killen was prosecuted and none of the others who were equally involved. "Justice for all" lies at the heart of the American-way and it doesn't appear to be happening in Neshoba County.

Regards,

Charles H. Leck

Filmmaker collaborating with FBI on civil rights cases for TV show

2008-04-22T22:34:00.003-05:00

JACKSON, Miss. — As an African-American teenager in Louisiana, Keith Beauchamp tried interracial dating - behaviour that prompted his parents to tell him the grisly tale of Emmett Till, who was murdered for whistling at a white woman.

The story of Till, a 14-year-old from Chicago who had come to Mississippi to visit his uncle in August 1955, was seared into Beauchamp's mind and, when he moved to New York to begin his career as a filmmaker, the slaying was his first major project.

Beauchamp's 2005 documentary on Till, in large part, led the federal government to reopen the 1955 murder case. Last year, a grand jury declined to indict Carolyn Bryant Donham, the object of the whistle, on a manslaughter charge. The two men who brutally beat the teen and dumped his body in a river died years ago.

Still, Beauchamp's documentary expertise and his ability to persuade people to talk about buried secrets of the civil rights era have earned him a rare collaboration with the FBI.

Now, Beauchamp is filming a series of documentaries based on civil rights killings for the cable channel History as well as TV One. Any new evidence Beauchamp uncovers is shared with the FBI for its Cold Case Unit that focuses on crimes that have gone unpunished from that era.
Continued --

CSI Mississippi: Group Calls For Removal of Steven Hayne's Medical License

2008-04-08T15:32:00.002-05:00

--Performed Cleve McDowell's Autopsy: Where were the bullets?
* * * * *

Innocence Project Asks State Board to Revoke Steven Hayne’s Medical License Based on Repeated Autopsy Misconduct

1,000-page formal allegation with Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure seeks to stop Hayne from conducting autopsies and practicing medicine

(JACKSON, MS; April 8, 2008) – Based on evidence that Steven Hayne, who conducts 80% of autopsies in Mississippi, has committed fraud and misconduct that sent an unknown number of innocent people to prison, the Innocence Project and the Mississippi Innocence Project today filed a formal allegation to revoke his license to practice medicine in Mississippi.

The allegation filed today with the Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure outlines several violations – spanning two decades – of the Mississippi state law that regulates medical practice. Hayne’s practices have been questioned for several years and have come under increasing scrutiny after two men – Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, both of Noxubee County, Mississippi – were exonerated this year, 15 years after Hayne’s testimony helped convict them of capital crimes they did not commit.

If the State Board of Medical Licensure revokes Hayne’s medical license, he will not be able to conduct any autopsies for law enforcement in Mississippi or practice medicine in any other context in the state. Under the law, a doctor’s medical license is revoked if he or she engages in “incompetent professional practice, unprofessional conduct, [and] other dishonorable or unethical conduct that is likely to deceive, defraud, or harm the public.” The law also requires doctors to be “honest in all professional interactions including his or her medical expert activities” and directs medical experts “not [to] make or use any false, fraudulent, or forged statement or document.”

“Steven Hayne’s long history of misconduct, incompetence and fraud has sent truly innocent people to death row or to prison for life. This is precisely why regulations are in place to revoke medical licenses. Steven Hayne should never practice medicine in Mississippi again, and the complaint we filed today is an important step toward restoring integrity in forensic science statewide – and restoring confidence in the state’s criminal justice system,” said Peter Neufeld, Co-Director of the Innocence Project. The Innocence Project is a national organization affiliated with Cardozo School of Law; the Mississippi Innocence Project is based at the University of Mississippi School of Law.

The allegation filed today with the Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure includes a 14-page summary letter and 1,000 pages of supporting documents, including trial transcripts and autopsy reports from several cases. The allegations that merit revoking Hayne’s medical license include:

Hayne misrepresents his credentials, claiming under oath to be the “chief state pathologist for the Department of Public Safety” (a position that does not exist) and claiming under oath to be “board-certified” in “forensic pathology” (when in fact he is not properly board-certified in forensic pathology). Papers filed with the Board today include several transcripts of testimony where Hayne has made these false claims.

Hayne testified falsely in Levon Brooks’ trial, leading to his wrongful conviction and sentence of life in prison without parole. The victim in the case had marks on her body, and the prosecution’s central theory of the crime was that they were human bite marks inflicted before the victim died. Hayne testified that marks on the victim’s hand in the case occurred prior to her death – a conclusion that is “simply wrong,” according to the allegation, and has no scientific basis.

Hayne testified falsely in Kennedy Brewer’s trial, leading to his wrongful conviction and death sentence. Just as it was in Brooks’ case, Hayne’s motive was to falsely claim that marks on the child’s body were inflicted by the assailant before she died. Even though the marks clearly were caused after the victim died, Hayne’s false assertion would support the prosecution’s central theory of the case. Hayne claimed in the autopsy report that he took biopsies from the so-called bite marks (to determine whether they occurred prior to her death), but testified at Brewer’s trial that he didn’t take biopsies of the marks. The most logical conclusion is that Hayne realized the biopsies would not support the false theory that the marks occurred before the victim’s death, so Hayne improperly stopped analyzing them. Hayne also testified in Brewer’s trial that the marks were caused by human teeth, rather than the expected decomposition or insect activity that regularly occurs after death. There was no scientific basis for Hayne’s testimony.

Hayne testified falsely in Tyler Edmonds’ trial, leading to his conviction and death sentence. Hayne claimed that he could tell from a bullet wound in the victim’s head that it was more likely that two people (rather than one person) had fired the fatal shot together. The Mississippi Supreme Court found Hayne’s testimony in the case “scientifically unfounded” and noted that his conclusion was not based on scientific methods or procedures.

Hayne issued an autopsy report – with no medical or scientific basis – supporting the prosecution case against Tina Funderburk, who is being charged with her daughter’s murder. An expert who Hayne himself brought into the case said the cause and manner of death could not be determined, but Hayne nevertheless examined the meager skeletal remains and said the child died from compression of the head and suffocation.

In four other cases, Hayne may have made false findings and potentially testified falsely under oath. In two of those cases, Hayne examined skeletons and said he could tell that the victims were strangled (even though the skeletons had no muscles). In another one of the cases, Hayne claimed in an autopsy report that he examined organs – when in fact it appeared the organs had not been touched.

“We have only presented the tip of the iceberg to the State Board of Medical Licensure, but this evidence shows Steven Hayne’s unprofessional, dishonorable and unethical conduct that has deceived, defrauded and harmed the public,” said W. Tucker Carrington, Director of the Mississippi Innocence Project.

The complaint filed today says, “We believe the conduct in this complaint alone is sufficient to justify immediate revocation of Dr. Hayne’s license … His work compromises the accuracy and integrity of medicine and criminal justice throughout the state. We urge you to put an end to his misconduct through an expeditious, thorough investigation of his work and revocation of his license.”

The Innocence Project and the Mississippi Innocence Project continue asking the state’s Commissioner of Public Safety to appoint and help secure funding for a State Medical Examiner. The State Legislature created the position in the 1980s to provide assistance and oversight for medical examiners across the state. The position has been vacant for over a decade, leaving no oversight of Hayne’s autopsies and no system for training and recruiting qualified pathologists to conduct autopsies in Mississippi.

For the summary letter of today’s allegation, go to: http://www.innocenceproject.org/docs/Letter_to_Medical_Board.pdf

For more on the Brewer and Brooks cases, go to: http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/1175.php

For the letter from the Innocence Project and the Mississippi Innocence Project to the Commissioner of Public Safety, urging him to fill and help fund the State Medical Examiner position, go to: http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/1173.php

For an op-ed earlier this month from a former Commissioner of Public Safety, calling on officials to fill and fund the State Medical Examiner position, go to: http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080330/OPINION/803300302/1046

For more background on Steven Hayne, see “CSI Mississippi,” a Reason Magazine investigative report by Senior Editor Radley Balko, at http://www.reason.com/news/show/122458.html.

###

Eric Ferrero
Director of Communications
The Innocence Project
Office: 212-364-5346
Cell: 646-342-9310
100 Fifth Ave., 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10011
www.innocenceproject.org

MORE on Hayne ... Reason Magazine, November 2007

In a remarkable capital murder case earlier this year, the Mississippi Supreme Court, by an 8-to-1 vote, tossed out the expert testimony of Steven Hayne. The defendant was Tyler Edmonds, a 13-year-old boy accused of killing his sister’s husband. Hayne, Mississippi’s quasi-official state medical examiner, had testified that the victim’s bullet wounds supported the prosecution’s theory that Edmonds and his sister had shot the man together, each putting a hand on the weapon and pulling the trigger at the same time.

“I would favor that a second party be involved in that positioning of the weapon,” Hayne told the jury. “It would be consistent with two people involved. I can’t exclude one, but I think that would be less likely.”

Testifying that you can tell from an autopsy how many hands were on the gun that fired a bullet is like saying you can tell the color of a killer’s eyes from a series of stab wounds. It’s absurd. The Mississippi Supreme Court said Hayne’s testimony was “scientifically unfounded” and should not have been admitted. Based on this and other errors, it ordered a new trial for Edmonds.

MORE on Hayne ... Reason Magazine, November 2007

Cleve McDowell -- Still a Warm Case?

2008-03-02T21:42:00.004-06:00

Cleve McDowell and the Rev. Jesse Jackson -- cotton dust flies in the air.

Eleven years after the murder of a popular Mississippi lawyer, some still assert the murderers of Cleve McDowell were never caught. This criminal act deserves a cold case investigation -- while it still is warm.

On the morning of March 13, 1997, the lifeless body of McDowell, first black student admitted to the University of Mississippi's law school and a long-time civil rights advocate, was discovered by his youngest sister propped up against a bathroom wall.

Throughout his Drew, Miss. home, dozens of powerful handguns and rifles -- "always one within his reach," his sister and friends say -- had been strategically placed by McDowell for self-protection. So why didn't he use one to save his life?

What happened to bullets taken from McDowell's body during the state's autopsy? Would such evidence show if more than one shooter was involved? What happened to his guns and to all of his investigative files?

For over forty years, McDowell studied murders taking place during the modern civil rights movement. Where is all of the information he collected on the killings of Emmet Till, Medgar Evers and others?

There've been some attempts to explain what took place when McDowell was murdered, and one man went to jail. But nothing makes sense when you look at the whole story and talk to McDowell's friends.

More on McDowell and others ...

Murder of Martin Luther King Jr.; Did Klan Have a Role?

2007-12-30T15:45:00.000-06:00

Authors suggest White Knights of Ku Klux Klan may have played role in civil-rights leader's 1968 slaying

Jerry Mitchell • jmitchell@clarionle dger.com • December 30, 2007

Could the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi have played a role in the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.?

Nobody wanted King dead more than the White Knights, which referred to the civil rights leader in their literature as "Martin Lucifer Coon."

"King was the ultimate prize," said Philip Dray, co-author of We Are Not Afraid: The Story of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney, and the Civil Rights Campaign for Mississippi.

Continued --

Civil-rights era injustices still haunt us

2007-12-25T10:19:00.000-06:00

MARY SANCHEZ COMMENTARY

Civil-rights era injustices still haunt us
By MARY SANCHEZ

Anyone who has ever uttered an apology knows the power of these three words: “I am sorry.”

Apologies are the precursors to forgiveness, to healing. They’re necessary to put bitterness behind us and let us move on with our lives. This came to mind when I heard the news that more evidence had been uncovered in three of the most infamous unsolved civil rights murders.

In 1964, civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were working to register black voters in Mississippi when they were abducted by Klan members near the town of Philadelphia. All three were shot to death, then buried to hide the crimes. Chaney, the only black man in the group, was also severely beaten.

Now, a December series of newspaper articles in The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss., has uncovered witnesses and evidence that could lead to new charges. Previously sealed FBI documents show that one vote kept a man from facing charges two years ago when a grand jury re-examined the case. One vote of innocence came from the man’s relative — clearly a violation of justice.

The last time new evidence in this case was uncovered, a then 80-year-old former Klansman was convicted. Stooped, on oxygen and confined to a wheelchair during much of the 2005 proceedings, Edgar Ray Killen was sentenced to 60 years for manslaughter.

Continued --

Mississippi Cold Cases Need Resolution, Group Demands in Jackson, Miss.

2007-10-23T22:26:00.000-05:00

Adlena Hamlett, a retired Mississippi school teacher, was murdered with Birdia Keglar in 1965

THE NAMES ON THE SIGNS — Lamar Smith, Benjamin Brown, Wharlest Jackson, Adlena Hamlett ? were reminders of some of Mississippi's darkest days during the civil rights movement.

About 60 people rallied on the steps of the Capitol with signs in hand Monday, demanding that the state become more aggressive in investigating the deaths while there's time to bring culprits to justice.

John Gibson, a rally organizer, said the group has identified 55 Mississippians killed during the movement, which started in the 1950s.

"In the vast majority of these cases, there has been no justice," he said. "We are here to demand a full measure of justice for all of Mississippi's civil rights martyrs."

Continued --

Investigate Cold Cases, Mississippi Activists Demand

2007-10-21T22:42:00.000-05:00

# Activists, others to demand state officials investigate old cases

By Chris Joyner
chris.joyner@ jackson.gannett. com

SCHEDULE

Monday

# 11 a.m.: Rally participants will gather at Mississippi Coliseum in
downtown Jackson

# 11:30 a.m.: March to state Capitol begins.

# Noon to 2 p.m.: Rally at Capitol and speakers

Civil rights veterans and supporters will gather Monday on the Capitol
lawn to press state officials to aggressively investigate decades-old
deaths of martyrs to the movement.

Richard Coleman, president of the Meridian chapter of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said organizers
plan to call out the names of prominent suspects in the crimes and
demand government officials make complete investigations into the deaths.

"We want to target anyone that can influence justice in this state and
in this country," he said. "If it's the governor, if it's the attorney
general, if it's the president, we want justice for all in this country."

Dubbed a "justice rally," the event will include speakers from the
civil rights movement and family members of victims. Prominent among
them will be the son and grandson of Louis Allen, a Amite County man
who was shot to death in front of his home in 1964.

Continued --

Newspaper Recalls 1964 Mississippi Murders of Civil Rights Workers

2007-10-19T05:12:00.000-05:00

Memories of three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi are kept alive as an Alabama sociologist joins a small group demonstrating this past summer in Philadelphia, Miss.

Landmark civil rights trial was Hattiesburg American's top story 40 years ago
By PATRICK MAGEE

Editor's note: The Hattiesburg American, which is celebrating its 110th anniversary as a newspaper, this week is looking at past editions on this date. Today: Oct. 18, 1967.

A prosecutor stood before an all-white federal court jury in Meridian and asked the group to convict 17 of 18 men on conspiracy charges in the 1964 deaths of three young civil rights workers, an Associated Press story reported on the front page of the Oct. 18, 1967, edition of the Hattiesburg American.

Story continued --

Louis Allen; Relatives Ask For Cold Case Investigation

2007-10-14T23:41:00.000-05:00

Reward offered in 1964 slaying; efforts to find Louis Allen's killer increase after solving other cold cases

Family members of Louis Allen, a Liberty resident shot to death 43 years ago in what the FBI is investigating as a civil rights-era slaying, are offering $20,000 for information leading to the arrest of his killers.

Allen's namesake grandson, Louis Allen Jr., said family members suspect the killer is alive and that other people were involved.

The Allen case is one of more than 100 civil rights-era slaying under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. Louis Allen Jr. said he hopes the reward offered by the Mississippi Religious Leadership Conference will spark more interest in finding justice for his grandfather.

Efforts to solve the case have gained steam, following prosecutions in other civil rights-era cold cases, including two life sentences handed down this summer to James Ford Seale of Roxie in the May 2, 1964, kidnapping of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore. The teens were beaten and drowned.

Story Continued --

Medgar Evers remembered for achievements

2007-10-07T20:47:00.000-05:00

KNOWN TODAY more for his struggles for civil rights in Mississippi and his untimely death at the hands of an assassin than for his writings, Medgar Evers nevertheless left behind an impressive record of achievement.

Medgar Wiley Evers was born July 2, 1925, near Decatur, Mississippi, and attended school there until he was inducted into the army in 1943. After serving in Normandy, he attended Alcorn College (now Alcorn State University), majoring in business administration.

While at Alcorn, he was a member of the debate team, the college choir, and the football and track teams. He also held several student offices and was editor of the campus newspaper for two years and the annual for one year.

In recognition of his accomplishments at Alcorn, he was listed in Who's Who in American Colleges.

At Alcorn he met Myrlie Beasley of Vicksburg and they married on December 24, 1951. He received his BA degree the following semester and they moved to Mound Bayou, Mississippi, during which time Evers began to establish local chapters of the NAACP throughout the delta and organising boycotts of gasoline stations that refused to allow Blacks to use their restrooms.

He worked in Mound Bayou as an insurance agent until 1954, the year a Supreme Court decision ruled school segregation unconstitutional.

Continued --

Emmett Till Grand Jury Members Speak Out

2007-10-07T10:06:00.000-05:00

The Leflore County Courthouse in Greenwood

From the Associated Press

GREENWOOD — The half-century search for justice in the murder of Emmett Till petered out last February when a Leflore County grand jury declined to indict Carolyn Donham on criminal charges.

“There is nobody left to indict,” said Greg Watkins, one of 19 members from the grand jury. “It will be debated forever probably, but there is no one left living to send to jail.”

Donham, 73 and living in Greenville, was the centerpiece of the investigation conducted by federal and state authorities into the 1955 murder.

Members of the grand jury say that no one on the panel last February thought an indictment was in order.

“We all realized that this lady is 70 years old-plus, and no one really knows for sure how much she was involved,” said Gary Woody. “I think (Donham) knows, but there is so much that we just don’t know for sure.”

continued --

Tallahatchie Co. leaders apologize for Emmett Till's murder trial

2007-10-03T21:33:00.000-05:00

Tallahatchie River, near site where Emmett Till's body was found

October 2, 2007
BY SHELIA BYRD Associated Press Writer
JACKSON, Miss.---- The county where Chicago teenager Emmett Till's body was found after he allegedly whistled at a white woman officially apologized Tuesday for the way the crime was handled, more than 50 years after the boy died.
Tallahatchie County Board of Supervisors and Sheriff William Brewer Jr. signed the resolution that included an apology to Till's family. They also unveiled a marker commemorating the 14-year-old's death.

Continued --

‘We Could Have Used YouTube in the Civil Rights Movement,’ Says Former SNCC Volunteer

2007-09-18T22:12:00.000-05:00

Mississippi civil rights activist Margaret Block watches her computer screen closely as young Florida college student Andrew Meyer is tasered by campus police.

"How could anyone say he was resisting? He was holding a book under his arm and he never let go of it, as far as I can tell."

Block turns her attention back to the YouTube video as Meyer is arrested after campus police zap him with a stun gun because he won't stand up.

Posted on perhaps thousands of Web sites Tuesday, the video shows campus police officers pulling Meyer away from a microphone after he loudly asks U.S. Senator John Kerry about impeaching President Bush and whether he and Bush both belonged to the secret society Skull and Bones when they were students at Yale University.

Kerry asks police to let the student present his questions, but they pull Meyer away, instead. The video ends and Block is quiet; the young man's screams awaken memories she'd rather forget.

"We got this in the Civil Rights Movement, too. Police didn't use tasers to terrorize us but they would beat us down and put the dogs on us. And shoot water hoses at us. But can you believe he was tasered just for speaking out? In this day?"

Block still remembers the terror she often felt when working the Mississippi Delta as a voting rights activist two years out of high school in 1962. And she recounts the story of a 27-year-old student volunteer who was traumatized so badly she wonders if he ever recovered.

Her story begins when Block's late brother Sam was signing up voters and preaching civil rights in nearby Greenwood where he once rode a mule down the main street to draw attention to the cause.

Greenwood was home to Byron de la Beckwith, convicted years later for the murder of civil rights leader, Medgar Evers. Also living in the Delta cotton town was Gordon Lackey, a Klansman and Beckwith's mentor. Both Beckwith and Lackey are dead.

Margaret chose Charleston as her headquarters, a smaller town in the heart of Tallahatchie County, north of Greenwood, where she became a SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) volunteer after first working with the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Council).

Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was murdered and his body dumped into the infamous Tallahatchie River in 1955. Like Greenwood, Charleston also had a horrid reputation for violence.

"Not that Greenwood was much better. Charleston was just more isolated and there were even fewer black people living there unafraid enough to get involved in the Movement," Block says.

Her life was threatened several times in Charleston; once a Klansman tried to stab the young woman on the courthouse steps and his knife was quickly taken away by an FBI agent. "Agents weren't supposed to get involved but he did and I'll never forget it." Another time, Block was sneaked out of town in a hearse after rumors the Klan wanted to kill her.

In mid January of 1966, after Block moved away, two of her Charleston friends, Birdia Keglar and Adlena Hamlett, both NAACP members, were murdered in Sidon, a small cotton ginning community just seven miles south of Greenwood. Block and others have continued searching for evidence, hoping their murders one day become a cold case for the U. S. Department of Justice to solve.

Officially, the two women died in a car accident. But Block and others know better.

"Birdia Keglar was trying to start a chapter of the NAACP in Tallahatchie County and was a wonderful person. She managed the local funeral home and was responsible for sending a driver to sneak me out of town in the back of a company hearse after hearing the Klan was out for me. Adlena Hamlett was a retired teacher and like her son had been involved in voter registration and civil rights efforts for years."

Nina Zachery Black, Hamlett's granddaughter, believes the murder could have been prompted by her uncle's well-known hatred of the late U.S. Senator James O. Eastland, also a Delta cotton farmer.

"When he heard about his mother's murder, my uncle wept and said that Eastland had finally gotten to him by murdering Adlena. My uncle had often collided with the senator who was a noted racist."

Both Keglar and Hamlett met with U. S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy earlier in February of 1965 when they testified before a U.S. Civil Rights Commission hearing, telling of the years of harassment they'd been through for their involvement in voting rights including the hanging in effigy of Hamlett on the Tallahatchie Courthouse lawn. At the time, the senator warned his audience that both women had better return home safely, said one of Keglar's great-granddaughters.

Keglar once angered the local sheriff and county officials when her voter registration experiences were used by the U.S. Justice Department to argue the first Mississippi voting rights case before a federal court in 1961. She was the first black person to vote in Tallahatchie County since Reconstruction.

Both women were killed in mid January of 1966 -- on January 12th say family members and according to a brief newspaper account. The story is told that both women were on their way home from a Jackson meeting where they likely met once again with Senator Kennedy.

But new and somewhat different information has surfaced about the Mississippi murders after a 95-year-old aunt of Keglar's led Margaret Block to an eyewitness, 85-year-old J. D. Williams who recently moved back home to Charleston from California.

Williams says he was in the car behind Keglar and Hamlett when they were run off the road and has details to share. And Williams says the murder took place in Sidon, one day before others have said it occurred.

"Williams has given us something new that could help find truth," Block says.

This much Williams remembers

"We were meeting in Sidon, in a small church. Dick Gregory and another volunteer, Michael Stoffer, had been to Sidon and gave us a load of clothes to distribute. I'd given them to a local white agency but they kept everything and we had no clothing to hand out.

"We were talking about this and about the NAACP meeting coming up when a black man came into the church and looked around. He didn't look familiar. He acted strange and one of my friends, Jessie Brewer, said he thought the man was trying to look out for us or that he must be upset about something and couldn't tell us."

When the meeting ended, Williams and the others went out to their cars. "Mrs. Keglar and Mrs. Hamlett were in the car in front of us. I remember that a car driven by a white man [officially identified as Brown Lee Bruce of Sidon, deceased came up on them really fast and hit them in the side, forcing them into a steep ditch with water.

"Then more cars and trucks came out from nowhere, full of white men, and lots of shooting happened. They really shot up their car. I didn't recognize any of them. It was the firemen who finally came and removed the bodies from the car. They also took away the young college man who was with them."

Williams states that he and Brewer were frightened and drove off the side of the road after Keglar's car was hit. "Someone got us out of our car and arrested us for trespassing. They took us to jail in Greenwood and then someone got us out the next day. It might have been the FBI."

His recollections don't entirely match several accounts told by some and yet give substance to others in trying to piece together what happened over forty years ago to Keglar and Hamlett. One more person who also was in Keglar's car could shed more light -- if he could ever be found.

Richard L. Simpson, a 27-year-old voting rights volunteer from Massachusetts, was held isolated in the Greenwood Hospital where he was treated for injuries received in the car wreck -- until he disappeared. But no one knows or will tell where the student was taken. Simpson worked in nearby Belzoni the summer before and then stayed on for an extra year.

Block and others say that Simpson was probably sneaked out of Mississippi and sent home as soon as possible, perhaps for his own safety.

"That would have been the only way to keep anyone safe in those days. But I've always hoped he would come forward and give us more information," said Robert Keglar, whose brother, James Eddie "Sonny Boy," died three months later while unconscious in a suspicious house fire after he tried to find out from the FBI who'd killed his mother.

"Sonny Boy was just trying to find out what happened to our mother, and he ended up dead, too."

Leflore County officials say no records exist regarding the deaths of Keglar and Hamlett. And several former student volunteer leaders who knew Richard Simpson say they have no idea whatever happened to him.

This summer, however, the state of Mississippi officially declared a 25 mile stretch of highway outside of Charleston dedicated to Birdia Keglar.

Adlena Hamlett, left

.. and Birdia Keglar

Keywords: civil rights movement, YouTube, Andrew Meyer, Mississippi, Birdia Keglar, Adlena Hamlett

Were Is Justice: John Lewis Asks

2007-09-06T02:25:00.000-05:00

Once a SNCC volunteer protester, U. S. Rep. John Lewis is carried away by police

Wednesday, September 5, 2007, 02:23 PM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

U.S. Rep. John Lewis went before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, tying the disarray in the U.S. Justice Department to Georgia’s voter ID law.

Here’s the gist of his printed remarks:

“During the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, we knew that individuals in the Department of Justice were people who we could call any time of day or night….

“And we felt during those years that the civil rights division of the Department of Justice was more than a sympathetic referee, it was on the side of justice, on the side of fairness.

“During the movement, people looked to Washington for justice, for fairness, but today I’m not so sure that the great majority of individuals in the civil rights community can look to the division for that fairness…

Continued --

Mississippi; Land of Cold Cases Revisited

2007-07-24T01:14:00.000-05:00

View Album

Get your own

For you to enjoy -- pictures of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta from over the year. Susan

In Memory: Lady Bird Johnson

2007-07-12T23:11:00.000-05:00

From Salon.com

A Southern, and liberal, Lady
A staunch opponent of segregation, Lady Bird Johnson shares the glory of the greatest presidency for civil rights since Lincoln.

By Sidney Blumenthal

July 13, 2007 | The obituaries of former first lady Lady Bird Johnson extol her beautification projects, graciousness and steady handling of the outsize personality of her husband. But she was also an unwavering supporter of civil rights and through the decades kept close ties to key people in the movement. Her achievements are inseparable from her marriage.

Continued ..

Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner Remembered

2007-06-25T16:08:00.000-05:00

About 100 people gathered over the weekend to pay respect to the short lives of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Paul Goodman, three civil rights workers killed in 1964 near Philadelphia, Mississippi.

Click here to see a photo album of people and events ...

Jury is in; Seale guilty after two hours of deliberation

2007-06-14T21:27:00.000-05:00

Former KKK man found guilty of kidnappings
By Matt Saldana in Jackson, Mississippi
June 15, 2007 11:32am

A FORMER Ku Klux Klansman was found guilty of kidnapping today in the 1964 deaths of two black men in Mississippi, a case that highlighted white supremacist violence during the civil rights era.

A jury deliberated just two hours before convicting James Seale, who was also charged with conspiracy in the killings of 19-year-olds Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore.

Continued --

Attorneys conclude case against Seale

2007-06-14T03:32:00.000-05:00

The Associated Press reports that attorneys for a reputed Ku Klux Klansman concluded their case Wednesday in Jackson, Miss. without his testimony on kidnapping and conspiracy charges in the 1964 deaths of two black Mississippi teenagers.

Witnesses called on behalf of James Ford Seale, 71, included his younger brother and an Alabama forensic pathologist who testified he studied autopsy reports on the two young men but could not draw any conclusions about how they died.

More --
* * *

Money to probe cold rights cases advances

2007-06-13T06:48:00.000-05:00

PETER HARDIN
TIMES-DISPATCH WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT
reports ...

WASHINGTON -- Widows of two civil-rights activists slain in the 1960s appealed to Congress yesterday to help bring justice in scores of cold murder cases from that era.

To do so, Myrlie Evers-Williams said, would aid surviving families and tell the nation "that these people's lives were not in vain." She testified on the 44th anniversary of the assassination in Mississippi of her husband, Medgar Evers.

Further prosecutions could help the nation understand its history better in order to heal deep wounds and achieve reconciliation, added Rita Schwerner Bender. Her husband, Michael Schwerner, was killed in Mississippi in 1964.

A House subcommittee unanimously approved a bill to authorize spending $13.5 million a year over 10 years for reopening the cases that have gone cold. Of that, $11.5 million would go to the Justice Department and the remainder to help state and local authorities.

More -

Blogging Across Mississippi: Photos Online From Birdia Keglar Highway Dedication

2007-06-02T10:32:00.000-05:00

Birdia Keglar Highway Dedication
June 1, 2007
Charleston, Miss.

Photos are now posted from the highway dedication that took place June 1. You can view (and download) from here.

Opening arguments set for Monday in 1964 case in Mississippi

2007-06-02T09:26:00.000-05:00

From the Associated Press ..

JACKSON, Miss. --Opening arguments are set to start Monday afternoon in the federal trial of reputed Klansman James Ford Seale, who's charged with kidnapping and conspiracy in the 1964 slayings of two black teenagers in southwest Mississippi.

The third day of jury selection stretched late into Friday night and the pool of potential jurors was narrowed to 34 people from across the southern half of Mississippi.

Continued

DOJ Probes Turn to Civil Rights Division

2007-06-02T09:20:00.000-05:00

This news just in about the Civil Rights division of the Department of Justice. Will cold cases be taken more seriously?

For some former career staff in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, Bradley Schlozman's face-off with the Democratic-led Senate Judiciary Committee this week couldn't have come soon enough.

"I'm glad to see it," says Toby Moore, a researcher who worked in the division's voting section from 2000 to 2005. "It's way overdue."

That's because Schlozman, who was a senior political official in the division from 2003 to 2006, including five months as its acting assistant attorney general, has emerged as the latest lightning rod for allegations that the Justice Department has become politicized during the Bush administration.

Here's more ..

Birdia Keglar Memorial Highway; Sign Unveiled

2007-06-02T00:01:00.000-05:00

It was a beautiful day in the Mississippi Delta as friends and family of the late Birdia Keglar were present to see a 25 mile stretch of highway dedicated to the voting rights advocate who was killed in 1966.

More to come ...

Blog Across the Mississippi Delta Civil Rights History Tour

2007-05-29T09:19:00.000-05:00

AS FREEDOM VOLUNTEERS packed up and left Mississippi in 1964, brutality and murder kept going on. Some stories made it into the news and into later history books, but in smaller Delta towns several hundred miles north of Jackson, many incidents remain only as whispers among those who once picked the cotton ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Bloggers Set to Revisit Mississippi Delta Civil Rights People and Places

Mount. Pleasant, Iowa (USA), May 29, 2007--Two friends from Cleveland, Mississippi and Mount Pleasant, Iowa, are spending ten days roaming and blogging the Mississippi Delta while visiting civil rights people and places. Their pictures and stories will be placed daily at http://mississippimurders.com on the Internet. (Photo at left, courthouse in Belzoni, home of the Rev. George Lee who was murdered in 1955.)

Margaret Block, an early civil rights advocate, and Susan Klopfer, author of Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited, plan to roam the Mississippi Delta starting June 1, visiting people and places of the modern civil rights movement. “We'll be traveling in and out of the Delta for ten days as we photograph important spots and talk about the region's history,” Klopfer said.

“We plan to visit the towns of Money, Drew, Glendora, Greenwood and other spots connected to the murders of Emmett Till, Birdia Keglar, Adlena Hamlett and Cleve McDowell, among others who were killed for their civil rights activities or just for being black.”

Block, an early SNCC volunteer, spent her first years out of high school in the small town of Charleston where they will kick off their blogging venture by attending a program June 1 honoring Keglar. The NAACP leader was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1966 on her way home from a Jackson meeting with Sen. Robert Kennedy. Keglar once saved Block’s life by moving her out of Charleston in a hearse from the funeral home that Keglar managed.

“We have very few scheduled stops, but we will also leave the Delta to attend the funeral of Mrs. Chaney, James Chaney's mother in Meridian,” Block said. The two also plan to visit with Unita Blackwell, Mississippi’s first black woman mayor, and will take pictures as they roam the historical Brooks Farm, Parchman penitentiary, and Clarksdale, home of Aaron Henry, an early civil rights leader who Block also knew.

The two women met when Klopfer was researching a book on the civil rights movement, “Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited.” Klopfer was living on the grounds of Parchman at the time, where her husband was the chief psychologist.

...Contact:
Susan Klopfer
775-340-3585 (cell) sklopfer@gmail.com
http://mississippimurders.blogspot.com
http://themiddleoftheinternet.com

# # #

Blog Across the Mississippi Delta Civil Rights History Tour

2007-05-28T13:46:00.000-05:00

Blog Across Mississippi Civil Rights History Tour

On June 30, I'm leaving for the Mississippi Delta to visit Margaret Block, Unita Blackwell and others involved in the modern civil rights movement. We'll be traveling in and out of the Delta for 10 days as we photograph important spots and talk about the region's history. You are invited to "travel" along on this blog. We have very few scheduled stops, but here are the first two:

June 1 - Charleston, Miss.
Margaret Block and I will attend the program honoring Birdia Keglar, civil rights advocate, who was killed in 1966.

June 2 - Meridian, Miss.
We will attend the funeral of Mrs. Chaney, James Chaney's mother.

Other points we'll be visiting:

Rolling Fork, Drew, Ruleville, the Brooks Farm, Parchman, Clarksdale, Glendora, Holly Springs, Cleveland ...

Stay tuned.

Susan

James Chaney's Mother Returns Home to Meridian, Miss. For Final Rest

2007-05-23T22:26:00.000-05:00

WJTV of Jackson reports

The mother of a slain civil rights worker is returning home to be buried. A fear of the Klan kept her away from Mississippi for decades. Fannie Chaney died Tuesday night at her home in New Jersey. News Channel 12 has learned her body will be brought back to Mississippi within the next few days. We don't have specific details yet for her funeral, but we do know she'll be buried outside of Meridian. She'll be laid to rest next to her son who was killed in 1964 along with two other civil rights workers. Threats on her own life forced her to leave Mississippi shortly after her son's death.

Continued ..

Story of Birdia Keglar, Adlena Hamlett gaining attention

2007-05-14T07:50:00.000-05:00

From the Lancaster UAF

This is a Mississippi story. On January 11 1966, a gold-toned Plymouth Fury carrying a group of voting-rights activists crashed on a stretch of road near the small town of Sidon in the west of the state. Two African-American women, Birdia Keglar and Adlena Hamlett, were killed on that day. That much is certain. But in their deaths is buried a painful question that has gnawed at three generations of their families. Was this an ordinary car wreck, or were the two women, who had previously been threatened, shot at and burned in effigy because of their efforts to register black voters, targetted on that road? Engineered car crashes were a known tactic by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi in the 1950s and 60s. Violent crimes against African-Americans were rarely investigated or punished. And even if the women were murdered by white supremacists, was it better, as some members of Keglar's own family believed, to leave such suspicions left unspoken?

Now, 41 years after that crash, Keglar's cousin, Gwen Dailey, is campaigning for the FBI to open an investigation into her death. Despite the passage of time, the lack of recorded evidence, and the death of what few witnesses there may have been to that accident long ago, it is not an entirely unreasonable hope.

More ..

Indictment in Jimmie Lee Jackson slaying

2007-05-09T16:29:00.000-05:00

MARION, Ala. - A 73-year-old retired state trooper was indicted Wednesday in the 1965 shooting death of a black man — a killing that set in motion the historic civil rights protests in Selma and led to passage of the Voting Rights Act.

District Attorney Michael Jackson said a grand jury returned an indictment in the case. He would not identify the person charged or specify the offense until the indictment is served, which could take a few days. But a lawyer for former Trooper James Bonard Fowler said he had been informed that the retired lawman had been charged.

It took the grand jury only two hours to return the indictment in the slaying of 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was shot by Fowler during a civil rights protest that turned into a club-swinging melee.

The case was little-known as a civil rights-era cold case but had major historical consequences.

Continued

Case Against Seale Not "Too Old"

2007-05-04T21:02:00.000-05:00

Judge refuses to dismiss Miss. civil rights-era kidnapping case against reputed Klansman

HOLBROOK MOHR Associated Press Writer
Wednesday May 2nd, 2007

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - A federal judge on Wednesday refused to dismiss the case against a reputed Ku Klux Klansman charged with kidnapping in the brutal 1964 slayings of two black Mississippi teenagers.

The ruling in the case of James Ford Seale came exactly 43 years after the killings of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee. The teens were seized near the southwest Mississippi town of Roxie and beaten before they were weighted down and thrown into the Mississippi River to drown.

Defense lawyers had argued Wednesday that the case is far too old for Seale to get a fair trial.

Federal public defender Kathy Nester called to the stand an investigator who testified that 36 potential witnesses are dead or unavailable.

"Every time we tried to follow these roads, we stopped at a grave site," Nester said.

Continued ..

U.S. governor censored news release, photos in civil rights cold case

2007-05-03T19:06:00.000-05:00

From CBC News

Documents obtained by CBC News show that the Mississippi governor at the time of the 1964 race killings of two African-American teenagers censored a news release related to the case and kept photos of their remains from the media at the height of the civil rights movement.

Paul B. Johnson Jr., who died last year, became governor of Mississippi in January 1964. The Democratic politician was known for his support of segregation, and had personally blocked the way of James Meredith, the first black student to register at the University of Mississippi, as Meredith tried to make his way on campus.

FBI documents show that Johnson personally influenced aspects of the Charles Moore and Henry Dee case.

Continued ..
-----
HOWEVER, it was Gov. Ross Barnett who blocked Meredith in his attempt to enter Ole Miss, not Gov. Johnson as CBC reports.

Meanwhile, Sovereignty Commission records are few with respect to Mr. Moore and Mr. Dee. Here are several

Charges dropped against two men accused of "Torso Slayings"

Klansman Seale questioned about murder of Moore and Dee

Photos of Klansmen, including Seale

What's interesting, is all of the investigation records that appear to be missing. Where are they? Could they still be in individual homes? Are they included among Sen. James Eastland's files housed at Ole Miss???

Klansmen powerful, witness says

2007-05-02T22:55:00.000-05:00

JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) -- In life, FBI informant Earnest Gilbert so feared his fellow Ku Klux Klansmen that he never had the courage to testify about the 1964 killings of two black teenagers. In death, his voice is finally being heard in a courtroom.

Prosecutors in a revived civil rights-era case are trying to persuade a federal judge to allow a television interview that Gilbert, who died in 2004, gave in 2000 to be used as evidence in the trial of reputed Klansman James Ford Seale.

Defense attorneys on Tuesday played clips of the ABC "20/20" interview about the slayings of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, both 19.

On May 2, 1964 -- exactly 43 years ago today -- the teens were abducted in the southwest Mississippi town of Roxie and beaten in the Homochitto National Forest before being weighted down and thrown into the Mississippi River to drown.

Continue

U. S. Rep. Thompson Wants Public to Know

2007-04-30T08:22:00.000-05:00

U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson urged members of the Mississippi Associated Press Broadcasters Association to remain vigilant in their efforts to uncover wrongdoing and preserve the public's right to know in an era of eroding rights.

Thompson, who lives in Bolton and represents the state's 2nd Congressional District, spoke for 20 minutes Saturday on several topics. He told a crowd of about 80 at the group's annual meeting that efforts to curtail the rights of the media must be vigorously fought.

"I firmly believe that a free press is important but also that the press and the public has a right to know," Thompson said. "It appears that some of our public officials have forgotten that. So I want to encourage you to keep pursuing that. That is a fundamental principle that this country was founded upon."

Continued
--------------

Rep. Thompson, himself, knows the power of the Sovereignty Commission. You will find quite a few entries regarding his brave history of civil rights activism. Here are a few ...

As an alderman, complains FBI not pursuring beating in his hometown of Bolton

Charges Selective Service System Black Conspiracy

Charges of Brutality, Intimidation and Harassment Toward Blacks by Police

Klan on the upswing

2007-04-29T18:19:00.000-05:00

The Ku Klux Klan, which just a few years ago seemed static or even moribund compared to other white supremacist movements such as the Neo-Nazis, experienced "a surprising and troubling resurgence" during the past year due largely to the successful exploitation of hot button issues including immigration, gay marriage and urban crime according to the Anti Defamation League (ADL).

(from The Black Voice News)
----------

When researching the Mississippi Delta for my book, Where Rebels Roost, I often ran into stories about the Klan and its activities. Following the Civil War, President Grant had sent federal troops to restore law and order to many of the most violent areas in the South afflicted by the newly formed group and Grant’s disruptions of Klan activities bought him both friends and foes since most states had either advocated Klan interests or were too intimidated to confront the KKK.

(Interestingly, no information regarding the Klan and its place in Radical Reconstruction is mentioned on the White House “official” web page of presidential history where Grant is described, instead, as having “neither vigor nor reform” and seeming “bewildered.” The site concludes “Grant allowed Radical Reconstruction to run its course in the South, bolstering it at times with military force.”)

In the Mississippi Delta, Klan members often stirred violent disruptions. In 1869, for instance, a party of Ku Klux Klan night riders burned a two-story Coahoma County residence belonging to James Alcorn, Mississippi’s first elected Republican governor. Alcorn had previously served in the state legislature of Kentucky and Mississippi, and had risen to the rank of general in the Confederate military service during the Civil War.

The arson also destroyed a valuable steam cotton gin and all of the resident blacks’ quarters, including a smokehouse. The St. Louis Democrat reported: “The cause of this outrage was that General Alcorn…believes that the Republican Party is now the only national party and the only friend of the South. His persecution is an evidence of the intolerant and cowardly spirit of the Mississippi Ku Klux.”

After more stories appeared in newspapers around the entire country, I finally found another account from the Friars Point newspaper that called other reports misleading:

We have refrained from saying anything about the burning … ashamed that such an act of vandalism had been perpetrated in the county, but since the newspapers have taken hold of it we will state the facts. The plantation, which was the scene of the disgraceful act, was not being cultivated by [the] General. It was subject to flood and for that reason was not cultivated. Some trusty freedmen proposed to rent it of him and pay their rent in improvements. The farm was rented. No sooner was it discovered that this had been done than the Ku Klux sallied forth in the night time and burned every house on the premise…. That the hated General … should presume to rent land to freedmen was a little more than the chivalric and sensitive Ku Klux could stand.

Jimmy Lee Jackson Murder; DA Promises Grand Jury

2007-04-28T06:29:00.000-05:00

Jimmy Lee Jackson

Prosecutor vows to find justice in civil rights killing

By Jerry Mitchell
Gannett News Service

The shooting death of a Vietnam veteran that sparked the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" march in Selma will be the next civil rights-era crime to make it to a jury's hands, an Alabama prosecutor vowed Friday.

Speaking at a conference at Harvard Law School, Dallas County District Attorney Michael Jackson of Selma said he would be presenting evidence to a grand jury May 9 in the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson in the west Alabama town of Marion 42 years ago.

Continued

And another journalist, Ben Greenberg, writes for The Black Commentator

Jimmie Lee Jackson did not live to see his grandfather, Cager Lee, finally receive a voting card in his early 80s at the Marion, Alabama Town Hall, August 20, 1965. The day came just two weeks after the Voting Rights Act had been signed into law by President Johnson. Congress might not have passed the law in 1965 without the pressure it felt as the whole world watched the spectacle of the Selma to Montgomery March five months earlier.

Continued

Journalist David Halberstam Dies

2007-04-24T07:49:00.000-05:00

Remembering David Halberstam

The Harvard graduate who went from Cambridge to Mississippi to cover the great domestic story of the time became one of the earliest and most important journalists to chronicle the great foreign story of the age: Vietnam, where, in the pages of The New York Times, Halberstam insisted on reporting what he saw happening,not what the government said was happening.

John Meacham, Newsweek

Journalist, author and historian David Halberstam has been killed in a car crash. Halberstam celebrated his 73rd birthday two weeks ago.

A Harvard journalism grad, Halberstam first made his mark at The Tennessean in Nashville during the Civic Rights era and was a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Halberstam was my journalistic hero. He was a wonderful observer who wrote early-on about the Civil Rights Movement. Halberstam, for instance,was one of few journalists who stayed in the Delta after the Milam-Bryant trial to report on the murder of Clinton Melton.

When researching Rebels Roost;Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited, I ran into his account of the Elmer Kimball trial and was blown away by his humorous style -- not quite what I'd expected in 1956.

(Here's a link to the chapter in Rebel's Roost that quotes Halberstam.)

Birdia Keglar Memorial Highway??

2007-04-18T00:59:00.000-05:00

Some very interesting news from the Mississippi Legislature

- “Birdia Keglar Memorial Highway,” a portion of Highway 35 in Tallahatchie County. Keglar, a voting rights advocate, was murdered by Ku Klux Klansmen on her way home to Charleston after meeting with Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in Jackson in 1966.

More on this story from the Associated Press --

Here is a link to the story of Birdia Keglar and Adlena Hamlett

It looks like Birdia's relatives are working very hard to see that her story is remembered. If anyone has the ability to help move this along, please do so. sk

Not Just Killen ...

2007-04-17T11:34:00.000-05:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Anna Morshedi, Programming Coordinator
The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies
Central Arkansas Library System
Tel: 501.918.3049, Email: amorshedi@cals.org

Why Only Killen?
A documentary that reopens the question of the adequacy of justice brought to the Mississippi civil rights murders of 1964

Little Rock, AR – April 16, 2007 – In the recently released documentary, Why Only Killen?, the Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center reopens the question of the adequacy of justice rendered by the state of Mississippi in the Neshoba County civil rights murders case of 1964. “After more than 40 years it is long past the time to reveal the truth and obtain a full measure of justice in the Neshoba murders case. It is late, but it is never too late to reveal truth and render justice.” says John Gibson, co-producer of the documentary.

In June 2005, Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen was convicted of manslaughter by a Mississippi jury, 41 years after the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. It is widely believed that there are many others who were complicit in the murders, yet Mississippi has never prosecuted any of these people.

Please join the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies for a screening of the documentary on Tuesday, April 24 at 6:30 pm in the Darragh Center of the Main Library. This event will begin with an introduction describing how the documentary came to be made. Freedom singer and veteran of the civil rights movement Margaret Block will share memories of her friends James Chaney and Michael Schwerner and lead the crowd in freedom singing.

What: Documentary screening of Why Only Killen?
Where: Darragh Center - Main Library
(100 Rock Street, Little Rock)
When: Tuesday, April 24, 6:30 pm

The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, a department of the Central Arkansas Library System, was created in 1997 through an endowment by the late Richard C. Butler, Sr., of Little Rock, for the purpose of promoting a greater understanding and appreciation of Arkansas history, literature, art, and culture. For more information, please contact Anna Morshedi at (501) 918-3049.
###

Keglar, Hamlett; Mississippi civil rights murders draw interest

2007-04-12T11:45:00.000-05:00

"Lest we forget ..."

Adlena Hamlett

Birdia Keglar

At last -- there is finally some interest building in the murders of Birdia Keglar and Adlena Hamlett, both killed in 1966 in the Delta, outside of Greenwood. Quite possible, now, the FBI will take on this closed case. Let's hope. Here's a story from the London Guardian:

This is a Mississippi story. On January 11 1966, a gold-toned Plymouth Fury carrying a group of voting-rights activists crashed on a stretch of road near the small town of Sidon in the west of the state. Two African-American women, Birdia Keglar and Adlena Hamlett, were killed on that day. That much is certain. But in their deaths is buried a painful question that has gnawed at three generations of their families. Was this an ordinary car wreck, or were the two women, who had previously been threatened, shot at and burned in effigy because of their efforts to register black voters, targetted on that road? Engineered car crashes were a known tactic by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi in the 1950s and 60s. Violent crimes against African-Americans were rarely investigated or punished. And even if the women were murdered by white supremacists, was it better, as some members of Keglar's own family believed, to leave such suspicions left unspoken?

Now, 41 years after that crash, Keglar's cousin, Gwen Dailey, is campaigning for the FBI to open an investigation into her death. Despite the passage of time, the lack of recorded evidence, and the death of what few witnesses there may have been to that accident long ago, it is not an entirely unreasonable hope.

Continued --

Gordon Lackey dies in Greenwood; Klansman involved in Evers slaying

2007-04-02T00:44:00.000-05:00

The man who may have killed Medgar Evers (or at least had a role in the assassination) died died Wednesday, March 21, 2007, at Greenwood Leflore Hospital.

When Medgar Evers was killed, rumors quickly spread that more than one Klansman was involved, including Gordon Mims Lackey. Several years ago, when tracking down this story, Becky Rouse of Sidon told me she had worked as a waitress and restaurant manager in Greenburg at the “Cottonpatch” Restaurant in the mid 1990s where a small group of men frequently met for breakfast.

“There were about eight of them and they talked freely around me, I guess because I was from Michigan and they wanted to get my reaction,” Rouse said. “Also, I’m a history buff and I could get them talking.”

When the final Byron De La Beckwith trial began, one of the older men, Gordon Lackey, “liked to brag” about his role in the murder, Rouse said. “Lackey said he killed Evers – that he was the triggerman – and not Beckwith. Lackey said that Beckwith knew he was dying and agreed to [turn himself in]…but Lackey said he flew a helicopter down to Jackson, shot Evers and came back early that morning. One of Lackey’s friends, ‘Buddy,’ would drink coffee with him and confirmed what Gordon Lackey was saying,” according to Rouse.

Interestingly, Lackey sometimes flew as an agricultural pilot, according to Greenwood aviation history buff, Allan Hammons. While there were no commercial helicopters in the region at the time, Lackey was a member of the National Reserves and the Guard, Hammons said. Further, the Klan owned its own airplane, and so Lackey would have had aviation access.

Rouse said the old Klansmen also talked about the Emmett Till murder and said she believes, from comments made by Lackey, “he might have been involved in that murder, too.”

Adam Nossitor, who wrote “Of Long Memory,” described Lackey, a small-time motorcycle repairman and charter member of the White Knights as “Beckwith’s old friend.” (137-139) Lackey had helped Sam Bowers draft a constitution for the new organization, according to
Nossiter, and in August 1965, “he recruited Beckwith into the Klan.”

It was Lackey who “proposed blowing up the SNCC headquarters in Greenwood, a plan that was later dropped because of FBI presence around the office,” Nossiter wrote.

A White Knight Kleagle or recruiter in August of 1965, Lackey later joined the United Klans of America. He appeared before HUAC on January 13, 1966, as did Beckwith, also of Greenwood. Lackey, who earlier helped write the 40-page constitution of the White Knights,the state’s most secret Klan organization, refused to answer questions, invoking the Fifth Amendment. Various Sovereignty Commission files hold newspaper clippings that give these details.

For the record, Lackey’s obituary stated the following:

He was a businessman, and operated several area businesses over the years. A native and lifelong resident of Greenwood, he was born Sept. 12, 1936, to the late Lyman A. and Rena Mims Lackey. He attended the Greenwood city schools, and was a graduate of Greenwood High School. He continued his education at Mississippi State University.

Mr. Lackey's work ethic was firmly established during his teen years when he worked for master machinist Horace Kitchell, and later for Jimmy Landers. During his life he owned and operated a motorcycle dealership, and introduced the Ducati motorcycle to the area.

In his later years, he became an airplane pilot trained by Gilmore Sims. He became an agriculture pilot and owned Spray Inc. During the course of his flying career, he served as president of the Agriculture Pilots Association. In the off-season, he worked in the family business, Lackey's Café, on what is now Park Avenue in Greenwood.

After a period of time, Mr. Lackey bought Greenwood Irrigation, and was a dealer for Lindsey Center Pivots. He also designed, sold and installed irrigation systems for home lawns and commercial property.

He was an avid reader who read for pleasure as well as knowledge reading everything from Socrates for Ayn Rand, and thousands of books in between.

His family says that those who knew him well realized that he was a philosopher at mind and heart, optimistic by nature, compassionate of spirit and wise. He was a staunch conservative who served the Republican Party whenever and however he was asked to do so.

Mr. Lackey was a Methodist and a 32nd degree Mason. He conferred Scottish Rites upon Sen. John C. Stennis. He was a skilled woodsman and an accomplished shot. His passion for pistol shooting wa a driving influence in his youth. For many years he was an active member of Gumbo Hunting Club, and memories of times spent afield at the club were dear to him. He also served in the Mississippi National Guard for six years.

He is survived by his wife, Mary Mulvihill Lackey of Greenwood; a son, Gordon M. "Beau" Lackey Jr. and his wife, Jennifer Weir, of Hattiesburg; a stepson, John Robert Capelle III of Greenwood; a stepdaughter, Teresa Gail Capelle Lay and her husband, Wallace A. Lay III, of Trenton, Ga.; one brother, Lyman A. Lackey Jr. of Lawton, Okla.; three grandchildren; one great-grandchild; and numerous cousins, primarily in Leflore and Carroll counties.

The Rev. Bobby Polk of Vicksburg will officiate at the services.

Burial will be in Odd Fellows Cemetery.
* * *

Looks like they left out a little … sk

Ten Years After the Murder of a Mississippi Civil Rights Lawyer –No One Talks About Cleve McDowell

2007-03-17T13:39:00.000-05:00

(Photo at left, young Cleve McDowell at the University of Mississippi in 1963)

By Susan Klopfer

Ten years have come and gone since former Mississippi NAACP leader Cleve McDowell was killed on March 17, 1997. Even though his slaying is too contemporary for investigation under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, named after the 14-year-old African American from Chicago who was killed back in 1955, a second look is still justified since all official records of McDowell’s murder remain sealed and unanswered questions linger.

Ten years ago a black criminal lawyer was shot to death in his Mississippi Delta home.

On the morning of March 17, 1997 the naked lifeless body of Cleve McDowell was discovered propped up against an upstairs bathroom wall by his youngest sister.

Throughout his home, dozens of powerful handguns and rifles – “always one within his reach” – had been strategically placed by McDowell for self-protection. Why didn’t he use one of his guns to save his life?

On the tenth year anniversary questions still surround the death of an important but forgotten civil rights leader:

What happened to bullets taken from McDowell’s body during the state’s autopsy? Would such evidence show if more than one shooter was involved? What happened to McDowell’s guns? Why do county officials maintain a gag order on all investigation records of this murder? And what happened to all of McDowell’s investigative files?

For over forty years, McDowell studied hate crimes and murders taking place during the modern civil rights movement. Where is all of the information he collected about the murders of Emmet Till, Medgar Evers and so many others?

Learning of McDowell’s murder, the Associated Press first reported

McDowell, 56, was found dead in an upstairs bathroom early that morning 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 for two days before discovering it in a small, nearby town.

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McDowell with Rev. Jesse Jackson, campaigning in the cotton dust of the Delta
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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 . . .

IN 1956, TWO YEARS AFTER Brown v. Topeka Board of Education and one year following the Delta murder of young Emmett Till, Mississippi legislators had installed a quiet and effective spy agency over their concerns of “forced integration” and related race issues. The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission did not close its doors until 1977.

Only in 1998, after twenty-one years of legal wrangling, United States District Court Judge William H. Barbour, Jr. ordered all Commission records not involved in litigation to be opened to the public.

McDowell was killed exactly one year to the day before this first court-ordered release of secret records – records that had been gathered on private citizens by former FBI, CIA and military intelligence agents performing their clandestine work during some of Mississippi’s most tumultuous years of civil rights strife.

When these secret records were first handed over to the public, many of the Sovereignty Commission’s files were considered missing by investigative journalists and other longtime civil rights observers.

Hence, McDowell’s extensive private collection of his own criminal and civil rights investigations – papers stored in high stacks of cardboard boxes and in his office safe – could have filled in some of the gaps, had his files been available.

But McDowell’s investigation records officially disappeared between the time of his murder and the official release of Sovereignty Commission files when fire engulfed his old law office where all of his papers were stored. Family members later told reporters McDowell’s records were in his former office when the fire started – after McDowell’s death – because they wanted someday to turn the office into a civil rights museum.

McDowell’s records could have easily filled such a museum, say friends and colleagues who saw the mounds of boxes grow higher each successive year until McDowell’s life was ended by gunshot wounds.

AS THE CIVIL Rights Movement years waned, McDowell never quit looking into Mississippi’s race-based murders and other hate crimes. His interest in Till’s murder remained strong; coincidentally, he and Till were born two weeks apart in the summer of 1941 and young Till’s murder influenced McDowell’s decision to study law and then investigate Till’s and other hate crimes against blacks.

Till was kidnapped from a nearby Tallahatchie County relative’s home in the small cotton town of Money back in 1955 and taken to a Sunflower County plantation outside of Drew where he was beaten, tortured and slain. Till’s body was taken to a neighboring county and thrown into the Tallahatchie River from a bridge. Ironically, McDowell would be killed in his Drew home forty-two years later, less than five miles from Till’s murder site.

And over the years, stacked boxes of papers and files on the Till case grew high in McDowell’s office while other papers were stored in his locked office safe as well as at home, his former office manager said.

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While he was busy writing down notes, McDowell “looked away and quietly said that people in this state would be surprised if they knew about all the politicians and their families who have murdered people.”

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“Cleve never let me go through any of those papers. So I don’t know exactly what he had. But Cleve often spoke to Emmett’s mother and promised he would find out what happened to her son and who was involved in his murder,” Nettie Davis said.

“I know Cleve talked to her on the phone just a month before he was killed.” Davis was McDowell’s office manager and had known him since high school days in Drew.

Kwasi McDowell, McDowell’s godson, also knew about his uncle’s investigations and said his uncle was always very quiet about what he was working on but “it was evident that his investigations were serious.” McDowell’s nephew said he once worked on a civil rights paper for school that required his uncle’s help.

While he was busy writing down notes, McDowell “looked away and quietly said that people in this state would be surprised if they knew about all the politicians and their families who have murdered people.”

“He didn’t say anything else, but he looked upset,” Kwasi McDowell recalled. “Cleve may have been working with two lawyers in Texas at one time to track down civil rights murderers…. I think both of those lawyers died in car wrecks, but I don’t recall any specifics,” McDowell’s nephew said.

ONE OF CLEVE MCDOWELL’S CLIENTS was quickly arrested and charged with capital murder – those charges were reduced to manslaughter in return for Juarez Webb’s confession. Webb, a Delta black, later retracted his admission but was convicted of the lesser charges and remains locked up in a state maximum security prison.

Within several hours of discovering McDowell’s body, a county judge placed gag order on the ensuing investigation; one decade later the same order remains on all public records of McDowell’s slaying, including records on a fire that destroyed his office and criminal investigative papers.

The decision was to keep a local police chief from damaging the crime scene and from spreading inflammatory rumors, Davis said. “But I don’t understand why these records stayed closed.”

Davis remembered how unusual McDowell’s home appeared when she first entered it with his sister; together, they discovered his body:

“The strangest thing to me was how neat the coffee table looked. I went into the house with Cleve’s sister and that was the first thing I noticed. It was always a mess, with papers, files, and books stacked up and even falling off. Everyone who knew him would remember that table. But this morning it looked like it had been cleaned up when we went into the house. Every paper was stacked neatly in a pile.

“There were these neat piles all over the table. My eye caught the coffee table immediately, as soon as I walked in. I had never seen it like this before.”
Even the dirty dishes that “usually filled the kitchen sink,” had been washed and this also struck Davis as odd.

Woodrow Jackson of nearby Tutwiler also finds it “intriguing” that his old friend’s coffee table was cleaned up and the dishes washed. Jackson, a retired funeral home employee, had embalmed Till’s body before it was returned to his mother in Chicago and knew McDowell through their shared interest in the murder.

“I knew Cleve very well. I didn’t embalm his body. I believe it was someone from Cleveland who did. But Cleve was a good lawyer and we often spoke about Emmett Till because he was very interested in finding all who were involved in the murder.

“Cleve kept boxes of records in his office. I know because I saw them. I remember a year or so ago before Cleve was murdered he brought Emmett Till up again and still seemed upset, but he would never give out any details. When his office burned down after he was murdered, a lot of important papers had to have been lost.”

Still one more person who knew McDowell was surprised after hearing about the clean coffee table. “Now that means something,” Margaret Block said. The former SNCC activist was preparing to have McDowell do some legal work for her when she heard he was murdered. Block and her brother, Sam, had both known McDowell beginning in the early 1960s when they were all involved in voting rights activities throughout the Delta.

Davis also asks why the town police chief was allowed to disturb and even “tear up” the crime scene. “He came to the house and told us all to leave – all of us including the police officer – and he stayed in the house for a long time, tearing up the floors and walls – like he was looking for something.

“He walked out with a small sack, but I don’t know what he had. It was obvious that he messed up the crime scene before the state investigators could even get there."
Twenty minutes after the police chief’s departure, Sunflower County Circuit Judge Gray Evans filed an order to seal McDowell’s residence making discussions of any findings or evidence from the crime scene illegal for any officers and personnel working the crime scene, Davis said.

Evans’ gag order remains in effect, even though the investigation was closed years ago, asserts the Sunflower County assistant district attorney who refused access to any of the police investigation or court records stored in the courthouse basement in Indianola, even though the gag order never covered court officers.

"The family would have to approve first," stated a Sunflower County judge who backed the ADA’s denial of a request for McDowell’s records.

"The police chief was saying awful things about Cleve when he came out of the house. I know that Judge Gray was just trying to tone things down before the gossip got out of hand," Davis said. "But I wouldn’t think he meant for the gag order never to be lifted."

While McDowell’s records remain unavailable, Webb’s case files kept in the courthouse were accessible and indicated

--An autopsy performed in Jackson the night of March 17, 1997 on McDowell by Steven T. Hayne, M.D., the state’s deputy coroner, indicated "negative" signs of any drug abuse.
--Cause of death was given as a "gunshot wound of the left neck, distant and perforating."
--The death was listed as a homicide.
--Three gunshot wounds fired in "close temporal proximity" but not at close range, “perhaps up to a distance of 15 feet” were described by the coroner:

a "nonlethal" wound consisting of a "nonlethal distant and perforating gunshot wound of the left back," a "nonlethal distant and perforating gunshot of the left shoulder with re-entry penetrating gunshot wound of the left temple" and a "lethal distant and perforating gunshot wound of the left neck."

These descriptions could not be put into sequential order, the report stated.

The autopsy report did not give information regarding the range from which the gun was fired, but in 2004, a physician practicing forensic medicine was asked to read the report and give his opinion. The physician said that shots could have been fired from fifteen feet away. The physician also speculated there could have been more than one shooter, given the angles of the three shots. But information about each of the bullets causing these wounds was not available in the report, making it difficult to reach a specific conclusion.
* * * * *

EARLY ON, MCDOWELL distinguished himself academically – as an outstanding Drew High School speech and debate competitor who continued his studies on a scholarship at Jackson State University in the state’s capital city of Jackson.

In the fall of 1963, McDowell was the first black student after James Meredith to be admitted to the University of Mississippi, and the first ever to study law at the James O. Eastland School of Law, named after the Delta’s late segregationist U.S. senator whose home was seven miles from Drew in the cotton town of Ruleville (also home to civil rights leader Fanny Lou Hamer, a friend of McDowell’s).

Soon after the murder of his mentor, civil rights leader Medgar Evers, McDowell learned that he and his college roommate James Meredith were next in line for assassination, he told Owen Brooks during an oral history interview in 1996.

Self defense became an issue for McDowell after the few U.S. marshals who had been living on the campus to protect Meredith left after his graduation in August. McDowell bought a mail order gun and applied for a permit to carry it, telling a school chaplain that he had purchased the gun because he was “scared” and “afraid somebody might kill him.”

"Most everybody else had one," McDowell told a civil rights historian in a 1996 oral history interview. "But when mine was discovered, I was expelled." (Sheriff Joe Ford who arrested McDowell also headed the Oxford, Mississippi White Citizens Council and was tipped off about McDowell’s pistol according to Sovereignty Commission records.)

Praised in a recommendation letter by the University of Mississippi’s liberal law school dean, who was upset over his student’s dismissal, McDowell transferred to the Thurgood Marshall School of Law in Texas, a "better and safer" place to be,” where he was class president and an honors graduate. The University of Mississippi’s current law school dean refused to provide a copy of the letter for this report or acknowledge its existence -- but a staff member said she had seen the letter.

It was a good move since the Texas law school was emphasizing civil rights law while the University of Mississippi was far behind, McDowell told interviewer Owen Brooks. Transcripts of this interview are not available according to state archive officials.

McDowell was not a radical reformer; there are few Sovereignty Commission records mentioning him except for his short time spent at the University of Mississippi and later as a civil rights movement participant and a Headstart coordinator. He was not a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), but remained an active member of the more conservative NAACP, serving in later years as state field director of the Mississippi Conference. McDowell also represented clients in various social justice and civil rights cases over three decades.

But the Drew attorney and community leader quietly set records for black achievement: he was named to the state Penitentiary Board from 1971 until 1976 and named by the governor as state director for Head Start from 1972 to 1976. No other black Mississippians had held such influential state positions for over 100 years, since Reconstruction. In his own community, McDowell was elected vice-mayor to the town council and served on the school board.

Cleveland McDowell also served as a Sunflower County judge from 1978 to 1982 and ran unsuccessfully for the Legislature in 1978 and 1987. His friend, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, appeared in the Delta to help with the campaign. For a short time, McDowell was a legislative aide to conservative U. S. Senator Trent Lott. He later became a minister and organized a small church in Drew where he spent most of his days in the last three years of his life.
* * * * *

ON AUGUST 21, 1997 nineteen-year-old Juarez Webb of Indianola was indicted by Sunflower County grand jurors on charges of capital murder and robbery of McDowell. Recently, McDowell had been Webb’s court-appointed attorney on burglary charges.
"The police thought Webb killed Cleve to steal his Cadillac, money and jewelry. It was all missing from his home when his body was found. They said Webb confessed to the killing when he was arrested," Davis says.

Five months later, Webb filed a petition to reduce his plea from capital murder to manslaughter, claiming he "shot and killed Cleve McDowell, without malice, in the heat of passion" and "not in necessary self-defense." At Webb’s preliminary hearing Drew Police Chief Burner Smith had testified that Webb told police "McDowell had thrown him on the floor and tried to pull his pants down to sexually assault him," reported the Jackson Clarion-Ledger.

Webb’s plea was accepted and charges were reduced. "District Attorney Carlton said accepting Webb’s plea was the best decision" since the case was "not iron-clad" and that McDowell "needed to be remembered for what he did as a leader in the Civil Rights Movement at a time when that wasn’t too popular," the Clarion-Ledger reported.

But then in July, Webb reversed himself again and filed a jailhouse petition to withdraw the manslaughter plea, citing "a series of interrogations, threats and promises [made to him] by various law enforcement officials" and "a series of statements of an incriminating nature [that were] obtained … in taped, written and oral form against the Petitioner’s will and conscent [sic]."

Interrogations, Webb claimed, were "unsolicited" and "initiated by … the instance [sic] of arresting officers and other varies [sic] courthouse officials." Webb said he did not waive his rights to silence or counsel or self-incrimination, but that he was forced unwillingly and without counsel present to answer questions.

Webb said that his family was "repeatedly harassed by law enforcement officials and was told by his attorneys that he would get the death penalty if he did not take a plea for a lesser charge of manslaughter."

And Webb asserted the charge of capital murder was dropped to manslaughter "due to the pressure and threats and unlawful statements obtained as well as other evidence and unlawful arrest against his will."

Webb admitted giving "false statements in court to end the truma [sic] and nightmare and to protect his family from further threats and harassments … [the] guilty pleas was made unwillingly, involuntarily and [he] was coerced to give his plea to avoid a big trial and publicity on his family."

Webb asked to withdraw his plea of guilty and to prove his innocence "so that the real suspect can be caught."

Webb asserted that he was "coerced" into pleading guilty to manslaughter by his attorneys:

"They told me I wasn’t going to be able – I wasn’t going to be able to get nowhere in this case, that I might as well go ahead and take a plea; otherwise, it would be over with me…. I guess they were talking about my life,” Webb stated in his petition.

On July 9, 1999 Circuit Judge Gray Evans denied and dismissed Webb’s motion writing that it had "probably" been a "wise" recommendation by Webb’s attorney to urge Webb to plead guilty to manslaughter rather than face the possibility of a death sentence from a conviction of capital murder.

MEANWHILE, SIX MONTHS after McDowell’s murder, a fire occurred in downtown Drew, devastating the town’s largest department store and the lawyer’s vacant office next door. All of McDowell’s records collected for years on unsolved race-based murders, lynching and related crimes were reportedly destroyed.

Flames were so high that some Cleveland residents could see the "lighted sky" eleven miles away from Drew, according to news accounts. Some Drew residents reported hearing an "explosion" in Drew at the beginning of the fire.

Drew police chief Burner Smith refused to release the records of the fire asserting they are at the Sunflower County Courthouse in Indianola. Smith has since retired.
Hailey Gail Bridges, the Sunflower County assistant district attorney, stated the records, “if they are at the courthouse,” were not available to the public.

Bridges, a graduate of the University of Mississippi, never did get along with McDowell, several former colleagues said. "He would beat her nearly every time in court. And then he would make fun of her. She really hated him," Nettie Davis said.

Like so many other blacks working for voting rights (and pro-integration whites, as well), McDowell was a Sovereignty Commission target and a moderate number of records remain in the commission’s files on him. McDowell had received advance copies of his Sovereignty Commission files “to look over before they were made public” – just one week before he was murdered. McDowell did not appear disturbed over what he saw, Davis said.

One record gave the name of a possible Jackson "homosexual partner" of McDowell’s while him as a young black man on the rise – someone who impressed the Governor. Another record placed him with James Meredith in a homosexual encounter.
* * * * *

SOMEHOW, MCDOWELL KNEW OF his preeminent death; he told his Drew minister, Rev. Jesse Gresham that he expected to die and asked Gresham to conduct the funeral service.

The minister believes McDowell’s murder could have been related to a very large settlement he won for a client who lived near Tunica and “may have involved something to do with a utility company.”

McDowell had had invited Gresham and his wife to dinner shortly before he was murdered. "He said he had won ‘the big’ case he’d been working on and for once had lots of money. I didn’t know much of anything about this case, but I did hear that no attorney in Memphis would take it. Some say there might have been mob involvement."

But Gresham offered another story adding further mystery to McDowell’s murder. Two of McDowell’s close friends independently recalled this same incident that occurred several years before his death:

McDowell learned that a close friend, Henry S. Mims, an Alabama lawyer who also grew up in Drew, was dead – that he “committed suicide.” But McDowell did not believe Mims would kill himself – this was not in his personality.

McDowell and friends decided to drive to Alabama for the funeral, but McDowell said he would "go out first and try to find out what happened" and then call back to give an update before the others left town.

When McDowell arrived, Mims’ widow would not let him view his friend’s body and he learned she was demanding a closed casket during the funeral.

McDowell would not have taken such news sitting down, but most likely went to the funeral home to examine the body himself, Gresham believes. "Cleve would have worked to find out what happened to Mims and he would never take ‘no’ for an answer."

By telephone, McDowell reported Mims’ body displayed "cuts and broken fingers." Something was very wrong with the suicide story, McDowell told Gresham. "It made no sense."

McDowell sounded shaken and said he would not stay for the funeral; he also suggested that his friends not drive to Alabama, as planned, Gresham said.
But McDowell’s friends drove out to the funeral and were surprised at "all of the California people" who attended. "So many, that most of his Mississippi friends could not get inside of the church." Mims was a graduate of the City College of Los Angeles, and apparently had maintained contact with the Californians.

When McDowell and his minister got together back in Drew, McDowell again asserted there was no evidence of a suicide and that Mims showed definite signs of torture; Mims had been found by his wife, "hanging from a ladder inside of his garage," but "the whole thing looked like a setup to make his murder look like a suicide."
And then McDowell said something strange, something "out of character."

“He asked me to promise I would conduct his funeral when the time should come – and he meant it,” Gresham said.

"I thought he was kidding at first, and I told him I would be dying before he would since I’m quite a bit older. But he was serious and he looked scared. I asked him if he knew what happened to Mims and if he knew who did it. He said yes, and then looked down and said nothing else."

For the next several years, McDowell – also a Baptist minister – rigorously decreased time spent working in his law office to build up his church congregation.
"He spent more time picking out the dishes and other special purchases for the church than coming to work," recounted Davis, who with her husband, now deceased, confirmed the Mims story.

"Sometime I’d get worried about Cleve’s absence from the office and tell Cleve ‘we’ might get sued,’" she laughed, explaining that she did a good share of the office work via McDowell’s telephone instructions.

"He just really changed after the Alabama trip, and it was so important for him that everything be done exactly right for the new church. That mattered to him more than anything else."

Mims had visited friends and family in Drew only a few weeks before he died. "He looked fine. He was happy then and I remember we all had dinner together," Davis’ husband said, adding he could not imagine Mims committing suicide.

Mims’ relatives in Drew all refused interviews. One family member said they were afraid to talk, adding “….but don’t give my name.”

Most of McDowell’s friends contacted asked not to be named if they talked about his murder. A former Parchman prison guard explained: "Most of us know that Cleve’s death was not just a matter of a young kid shooting him because he thought Cleve was trying to molest him. Molestation would be impossible, anyway, because Webb was too old, legally, to be molested.

"But, there had been FBI hanging around here, and I personally think Cleve had to be one of the reasons why … his family and friends, I think, are still afraid to talk. They know what it is still like in the Delta, and so do I [since] I know how some of the richest people work."

In 1962, when James Meredith was attempting to enter the University of Mississippi, a "rich, white planter" approached him and "tried to hire me to kill Meredith." Even though the event took place over 40 years ago, the retired guard would not give the planter’s name.

"He wanted me to ‘do something’ about Meredith. Of course, I said no. But that is how it has always been around here – rich white people paying off others, including blacks, to murder black people. They think this keeps us in line. And this has not stopped – it still goes on."
* * * * *

CLEVE MCDOWELL BEGAN his public life as the quieter of two black students breaking grounds at the University of Mississippi. James Meredith in 1972 became the school’s first black student during a pivotal moment in civil rights leading to violence that left two dead and dozens of soldiers and federal marshals wounded. Then in 1966 Meredith was shot while walking from Memphis to Jackson, Miss., to protest racism. Throughout his lifetime, Meredith was known as an outspoken conservative who could easily upset liberals as well as conservatives.

McDowell never made such a splash on the civil rights scene. He was “the briefcase guy” during undergraduate days at Jackson State University where he quietly assisted freedom riders who were coming into Jackson bus stations. And unlike Meredith, his entrance to the University of Mississippi’s law school was quiet and uninterrupted; the Sovereignty Commission spies tried to find evidence to block his application – combing through grade school and high school files, interviewing teachers and family friends – but nothing of any use was found, according to their files.

But through the years, as civil rights heroes Medgar Evers, President John F. Kennedy, Rev. Martin Luther King, and Sen. Robert Kennedy were all slain, McDowell became more outspoken. Evers, his early mentor, had persuaded him to apply to law school, and through his years of state and national NAACP involvement, McDowell met Rev. King who once visited him in Drew. Rev. Jesse Jackson, John Lewis, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and a host of others also stopped by McDowell’s office when coming into the region.

McDowell gave countless interviews to the national press about resolution of civil rights murders:

In 1988 he told of his sense of devastation following the murder of Evers for a twenty-fifth anniversary story published by the Jackson Clarion-Ledger and called for a watchdog organization to locate and identify persons responsible for civil rights murders, “just as Nazi war criminals were prosecuted.”

“There ought to be some organization to track them down…. Right now some of those people are smiling and grinning in our faces and asking us to vote for them.” McDowell did not elaborate, but stacked in the corner of his Drew office was a growing mound of boxes filled with files holding notes and reports. The same was true of his coffee table at home: between the two sites were every piece of paper McDowell had collected that had to do with a murder, lynching or some other civil rights-based crime, Davis said.

McDowell and two other lawyers (“…. perhaps Texans who went to school with Cleve,” Kwasi McDowell said), were doing their own investigations, by then – from the murders of Emmett Till, Medgar Evers and forward, gathering every piece of information they could lay their hands on to solve crimes against black people, local, state and national.

In the fall of 1991, McDowell told National Public Radio reporter Vicki Monks there had been “a meticulous effort to reconstruct many of these murders and many of these people are in fact known, but it’s just a question of whether you can get to them legally.”

McDowell was referring specifically to the 1966 murder of an NAACP voting rights organizer whose Hattiesburg store and home were bombed by Klansmen. Appearing with Vernon Damer’s son, Dennis, and a former county district attorney, Jim Dukes, McDowell asserted there was “enough new evidence and enough of a change in attitudes that it’s now possible to get conviction.”

While Duke disagreed, citing passage of time, evidence, deceased witnesses and “the legal constitutional question of speedy trial,” McDowell asserted that convictions were not the point. That it was a matter of making the attempt to address old injustices.

Three years before McDowell was murdered, he spoke to The Philadelphia Inquirer’ Washington Bureau reporter Donna St. George shortly after prosecutors opened their third trial in the Evers case – attempting for the third time to prove that Byron De La Beckwith was the midnight sniper who killed Evers. Two earlier trials had been a “sham,” McDowell told St. George.

THERE IS NO QUESTION that McDowell and several other "well-known" civil rights veterans were quietly gay. It was a time of forced anonymity since gays were considered immoral if not communistic. Their lives would have been in peril had they practiced homosexuality in the open, a London researcher from Queen’s College explained.

Sovereignty Commission files show that agents reported by name any alleged gay behavior of blacks (including a brief mention of McDowell). And yet long-established rumors still circulate throughout Mississippi that Governor Ross Barnett, white and a Citizens Council member, was gay and "slept with at least one well-known black activist." Barnett was governor at the time of Meredith’s admission to the University of Mississippi and the name usually associated with the late governor is Aaron Henry, a well-known black activist who died in 1996. But no Sovereignty Commission reports regarding Barnett’s sexual behavior – if such records exist – have seen the light of day. Though Commission records alleging Henry’s gay sexual behavior are easily found.

Professor John Howard offered an insight to gay activities in the Mississippi Delta during the Civil Rights Movement in his thesis on "[T]he love that dare not speak its name in the Bible belt."

“Generally speaking, before the 1960s, [gay] Southerners, black and white, participated in similar practices and networks. But they were doing so in two parallel, segregated worlds.”

Howard was not surprised that any of McDowell’s family or friends would share knowledge of McDowell’s secret gay life, and did not question his murder because of their embarrassment.
“A deep-rooted and longstanding homosexual homicide mythology associates gay men with dangerous lifestyles and disgraceful deaths.” Up until the late 1960s, homosexuality in the South was “largely accommodated with pretence of ignorance, a system of mutual discretion in which much was understood but left unsaid,” Howard said.

“….many …. [prefer] silence or subtlety over open confrontation, despite all the whooping and hollering of evangelical ministers.”

Howard questioned rumors that McDowell was a pedophile. “Of course, his enemies would have wanted that sort of idea to circulate. But do you have proof that he had sexual intercourse with children? With pre-pubescent youth? It’s worth mentioning that the legal age of consent here in Great Britain is sixteen for both heterosexual and homosexual sex.”

The professor questioned if McDowell’s partners were “….incapable of consenting? I mention this because such accusations are a classic form of intimidation by white supremacists.

“Bill Higgs [a well-known, white Mississippi civil rights attorney], as you know, was accused of having sex with a sixteen-year-old. This may have been true. But it also may have involved what I would refer to as a set of consensual acts. You need only look back several decades to find a time when the age of consent in Southern states was what would now be seen as shockingly low. [The statutory age of sexual consent was increased from 14 to 16 in Mississippi as of January 1, 2000.]

But McDowell’s ghost is fading – helpful for the state of Mississippi and for many of his old friends and family members who appear embarrassed over aspects of his life. The Mississippi civil rights collection housed at the William Winters Library in Jackson shows no records on file for McDowell (even though he was appointed to several state positions by former governor Winters) and curators said they had never heard of him.

Officials from the James O. Eastland School of Law at the University of Mississippi refused to share any records about his short attendance there. When asked for a copy of a letter praising McDowell (its existence acknowledged by a staff member), the school’s dean said the letter did not exist.

Charles McLauren of Indianola, an active civil rights advocate and SNCC member, who knew McDowell well, said he did not want to talk about him and deferred questions to McDowell’s family. Conceding that family members would not talk about McDowell either, McLaurin offered, "They think it’s better to let a sleeping dog lie," before quickly ending the phone call.

One Drew friend of McDowell’s confirmed that she often accompanied the attorney to statewide events, serving as his female companion for appearance sake – “so people wouldn’t know he was gay.” She did not want to give her name.

A young man from McDowell’s home town claimed he was "molested" by McDowell "for years" and "wish I’d shot him, myself." But the Drew native who did not want to state his name said that an attempt in later years to "make [McDowell] look like a pedophile" was a “set-up.” Cleveland parents of a young child made the accusation, he said, “but no charges were ever filed.”

He remembered the day McDowell was murdered. FBI personnel were in Drew "by noon" after McDowell’s body was discovered. "They had been watching him," he said, but gave no details.

Mississippi attorney Constance Slaughter, who’d known McDowell professionally and personally over the years, told Jackson, Mississippi Clarion-Ledger reporter Eric Stringfellow that

"[Cleve McDowell] has a place in history. I thought he was a person who felt that he had paid his dues and one who knew that he made quite a few sacrifices to try to achieve equality for everybody. He stood up when it was crucial." Slaughter refused to be interviewed for this story, though.

Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of slain Mississippi civil rights leader Medgar Evers, told Stringfellow that she first met McDowell when he studied at Jackson State University and was involved in the NAACP; the long-time friend was described as speechless when told of McDowell’s death.

Her strongest memories of McDowell were “when [Cleve] applied to Ole Miss and the difficulties and the harassment and how proud I think the entire community was.
"He was one of the few who would mention Medgar as a role model, and he did it during a time when others wouldn’t mention Medgar – either they had forgotten or chose to forget. Whenever Cleve would speak, he would always mention something about Medgar," she said.
* * * * *

THE FAMILIAR SMELL of pan-fried catfish and steamy greens float into the air as an old friend of McDowell’s talked about the man he’d known for so many years.
"The streets are quieter now in Drew. Cleve was so bright and he was a true character.”

Walter Scurlock stopped preparing lunch for a moment at his restaurant on the center block of Drew’s Main Street near McDowell’s former law office and chuckle about his old friend as he recounted several stories of this small town’s first black city councilman and former Masonic leader.

“He would always make sure that everyone’s Masonic dues were paid every year. He would pay them himself just to see that no one lost their membership. He was a conscientious leader.”

Scurlock’s voice warmed when remembering how the small town lawyer would ‘fire’ his secretary every so often. “Oh, she’d stomp home, carrying her pink purse. I can see it now. Sometimes Cleve called out after her, saying he was really sorry and asking her to come back. Other times he walked to her house – sort of like he was crawling there – begging her to come back to the office.”

"Old Cleve was a special kind of guy," Scurlock said with a smile as he set out the day’s fare of deep-fried catfish, collard greens, fried okra and sweet tea.

"I sure miss him – We all do."

Copyright 2007--Susan Klopfer ("Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisisted," )

FBI 'Puts Heat' on Civil Rights Era Cold Cases

2007-03-11T10:21:00.000-05:00

FBI puts heat on civil rights-era cold case
Unsolved death of Edisto 12-year-old draws Justice Department's attention

BY SCHUYLER KROPF
The Post and Courier

EDISTO ISLAND - When the body of 12-year-old Freddie Robinson washed up in the surf during the summer of 1960, police said it proved the local boy had drowned accidentally.

His family contends it meant something else: That he'd been murdered, his lifeless body tossed in a creek, for dancing with white girls.

Almost five decades later, Freddie's nearly forgotten file is among 100 or so cases from the civil rights-era that the FBI may seek to reopen. The U.S. Department of Justice and a coalition of civil rights groups, led by the Southern Poverty Law Center, announced late last month that it is time to re-examine some of the nation's questionable or unresolved cold cases. At least three are from South Carolina, including the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre.

Continued --

FBI back in; reopening civil rights era murder cases

2007-03-02T14:25:00.000-06:00

FBI investigating suspicious civil rights era deaths
Jaime Jansen at 11:34 AM ET

[JURIST] The FBI [official website] has started investigating 10-12 civil rights era suspicious death cases [press release], according to FBI Director Robert Mueller [remarks] and US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales [official profile] Tuesday. Although officials declined to comment on which cases have been re-opened, they did confirm that the lynching of four sharecroppers in 1946 on Moore's Ford Bridge in Georgia were among the cases. Investigators would not comment on whether the cases also included the shooting death of Maceo Snipes [AP backgrounder] in 1946, right after Snipes voted for the first time in Georgia. Investigators did confirm that most of the civil rights cases [FBI backgrounder] being investigated stem from suspicious deaths in the South. Working in conjunction with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the National Urban League [advocacy websites], the FBI has identified 100 cold cases that may warrant further investigation.

Tuesday's announcement falls in line with a recent trend in settling unfinished civil rights cases...

Continued --

FBI may reopen cold cases involving slayings in the South

2007-02-23T21:40:00.000-06:00

By CHRIS TALBOTT
Friday, February 23, 2007 8:37 PM CST

JACKSON, Miss. - The FBI is considering reopening dozens of cold cases involving slayings suspected of being racially motivated in the South during the 1950s and '60s.

An announcement could come as early as Tuesday, according to a law enforcement official who spoke with the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the plans have not yet been finalized.

Story continued --

Cleve McDowell, slain ten years ago, worked to find all of Emmett Till's murderers

2007-02-16T10:32:00.000-06:00

Slain sttorney Cleve McDowell and Rev. Jesse Jackson campaign in the Mississippi Delta (as the cotton dust flies through the air). McDowell was murdered in 1997 and questions remain.

With February’s announcement of a second attempt by the U.S. Congress to open civil rights cold case files, questions re-surface over the more recent murder of a Mississippi Delta lawyer and civil rights warrior. Cleve McDowell was killed just ten years ago – an act too recent to be investigated under the pretext of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, named after the 14-year-old African American from Chicago who was killed in 1955. Investigation and court records of McDowell’s death remain sealed.
-----

Ten years ago on March 17 friends and family of a Mississippi attorney and civil rights veteran discovered his dead body slumped against the bathroom wall.

Cleve McDowell had been shot to death in his own home.

A Sunflower County judge slapped a gag order on the ensuing investigation and a decade later the same order remains on all public records of McDowell’s slaying – even though McDowell’s murderer was caught and convicted before the year was over.

McDowell was the first black student to attend the University of Mississippi law school. And once a lawyer, he never gave up investigating Emmett Till’s racially motivated murder that took place only several miles away from McDowell’s childhood home – plus the murders of countless others caught up in Mississippi’s civil rights battles of the 1950s and beyond.

The Drew, Mississippi native’s body was surrounded by dozens of guns – powerful handguns and rifles – all purchased over the years by McDowell for self-protection.

Initial news reports of McDowell’s murder from the Associated Press indicated

McDowell, 56, was found dead in an upstairs bathroom early that morning 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 for two days before discovering it in a small, nearby town.

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.

* * *

Yet no journalists’ stories have ever revealed that McDowell was killed one week before the first public release of Mississippi Sovereignty Commission files, secret government records kept on private citizens officially spied on by state officials from 1954 until 1972.

After losing a 21-year battle with the American Civil Liberties Union, Mississippi was forced into turning over thousands of Commission records that would eventually aid in solving the murders of civil rights leader Medgar Evers and others who’d worked for social justice during those turbulent years, including Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.

Many of the Sovereignty Commission’s most secret records are believed to be missing, however, and McDowell’s private collection of his own investigations might have helped to fill in some of the blanks. McDowell had looked into a number of murders and other crimes over the past thirty years and stored these personal records in his Drew office.

Six months after McDowell’s death, those papers disappeared at the time of an office fire in downtown Drew.

McDowell’s former office manager states that files on the Emmett Till case were undoubtedly included in her boss’s collection of stacked boxes and in his locked office safe.

“He never let me go through any of those papers. So I don’t really know what he had. But he often spoke to Emmett’s mother and promised he would find out what happened to her son and who was involved in his murder. I know Cleve talked to her just a month before he was killed,” Nettie Davis said.
-----

Here are some old McDowell links. Of course, there are more for you to discover. sk

Link 1/photo

Link 2/news story of entry to U of Miss.

Emmett Till Bill Reintroduced

2007-02-12T03:43:00.000-06:00

A bill that could reopen thousands of civil rights-era crimes was reintroduced Thursday, Feb. 8, in Congress where it died last year when the Missouri Republican who introduced it lost his re-election bid.

Three Democrats and a Republican took up the bill that would establish a cold-case Justice Department unit to investigate unsolved civil rights crimes.

The Jackson, Miss., Cllarion-Ledger reports Sens. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Reps. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Kenny Hulshof, R-Mo., reintroduced the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, named after the 14-year-old African American from Chicago who was killed in Money in 1955.

More ...

Adlena Hamlett

2007-02-11T14:30:00.000-06:00

This early photo of Adlena Hamlett is shared by her granddaughter, Nina Black. Hamlett was murdered in January of 1966 (along with Birdia Keglar) when the two women were driving home from Jackson, Mississippi. This March I'll be traveling to Mississippi with Margaret Black, who knew both women, and we will be traveling through the Delta to visit early civil rights spots. We'll share our thoughts and photos on this site.

Bond Denied

2007-01-29T20:49:00.000-06:00

James Seale, charged in 1964

Reputed south Mississippi Klansman James Seale was denied bond Monday by a federal magistrate in Jackson.

More

Murder of Birdia Keglar topic of Memphis television interview

2007-01-27T21:12:00.000-06:00

The murder of Birdia Keglar, a longtime voting rights activist from Charleston, Miss., was remembered by relatives who spoke to a Memphis, Tenn. television reporter this past week.

See the report here

Robert Keglar, Birdia Keglar's son, was interviewed as well as Gwen Dailey, Birdia's niece. Both stated they would like to see an investigation opened on the January 1966 murder of Mrs. Keglar and Adlena Hamlett who were returning home from a Jackson civil rights meeting.

Three months later, Mrs. Keglar's son, James, was also murdered as he tried to learn more from the U. S. Justice Dept. about what happened to his mother.

Here is a link to the story ...

Also murdered on January 11, 1966 was Adlena Hamlett, a Charleston civil rights advocate and school teacher. "We're encouraged about this week's developments in civil rights cold cases and hope that the murders of Mrs. Keglar and of my grandmother, Adlena, will also be investigated," said Nina Black of Minneapolis.

Black was referring to the arrest Jan. 25 of James Ford Seale, 71, charged with kidnapping two young Mississippians, Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, both 19, involved in the civil rights movement who were ultimately murdered.

A reputed Mississippi Klansman and former sheriff’s deputy who was once thought to be dead faces federal charges after 43 years in the 1964 killings of two black men who were beaten and dumped alive into the Mississippi River.

Who Killed Jimmie Lee Jackson?

2006-10-09T14:01:00.000-05:00

(Reprinted by permission of the author)

September 21, 2006 - Issue 198, The Black Commentator
Who Killed Jimmie Lee Jackson?
by Benjamin Greenberg
Guest Commentator

Jimmie Lee Jackson did not live to see his grandfather, Cager Lee, finally receive a voting card in his early eighties at the Marion, Alabama Town Hall, August 20, 1965. The day came just two weeks after the Voting Rights Act had been signed into law by President Johnson. Congress might not have passed the law in 1965 without the pressure it felt as the whole world watched the spectacle of the Selma to Montgomery March five months earlier.

Jimmie Lee Jackson died on February 26, 1965 from injuries sustained a week prior, during the violent response by state and local police to a night time civil rights demonstration in Marion. His death was never properly investigated. No one was ever charged. He was twenty-six years old.

In 2005, Perry County District Attorney Michael Jackson reopened the Jimmie Lee Jackson murder investigation. At the end of August, responding to public pressure and a formal request from the District Attorney, Alabama Governor Bob Riley issued a $5000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the 1965 case. "The person responsible for this murder should be brought to justice," Riley said.

Governor Riley's public statement on Jimmie Lee Jackson was delivered by his press secretary, Jeff Emerson, as a recorded message on the answering machine of journalist Kenneth Mullinax. Mullinax published the Governor's remarks in the Montgomery Advertiser on August 29. "The entire statement was maybe two sentences," Mullinax wrote to me in an email. Emerson has not returned any of my repeated calls requesting a written statement from the Governor on Jimmie Lee Jackson.

Jimmie Lee Jackson's death inspired a determined throng of activists to attempt the dangerous march from Selma to Montgomery. The marchers had originally planned to deliver Jackson in his coffin to Governor George Wallace at the capitol in Montgomery. Their march for Jimmie Lee Jackson became the march for voting rights, which won Cager Lee his voting card, but won no justice for his dead grandson.
Who killed Jimmie Lee Jackson?

Former Alabama State Trooper, James Bonard Fowler, freely admits to having fired two shots into Jimmie Lee Jackson's stomach. Fowler claims he acted in self-defense, after Jackson had grabbed for his gun. Other witnesses say police officers ganged up on Jackson, pinned him to a wall, and Fowler shot the defenseless man at close range.

Who killed Jimmie Lee Jackson?

Eyewitnesses, including civil rights leader Albert Turner and the owner of Mack's CafÃ© where Fowler shot Jackson, say that after the shooting, troopers dragged Jackson outside and had a bona fide lynching, beating him to a pulp with clubs and fists.

Who killed Jimmie Lee Jackson?

Jimmie Lee Jackson died at Good Samaritan hospital in Selma. But he was carried first to the local hospital in Marion. According to Albert Turner, Jackson waited there an hour without treatment and it was another hour or more before Jackson was admitted at the hospital in Selma, approximately thirty miles away.
Who killed Jimmie Lee Jackson?

District Attorney Jackson has the opportunity to investigate the full range of suspects to advance an honest account of racist repression in Alabama and advance the cause of racial reconciliation in a manner seldom pursued by government officials. If District Attorney Jackson's investigation follows the usual pattern of investigations into Civil Rights era murders, he will miss this opportunity.
What does a missed opportunity look like?

Take Mississippiâ€”long-time model for Alabama when it comes to race mattersâ€”as an example.

Mrs. Fannie L. Chaney, mother of slain civil rights worker James Chaney, recently disclosed that Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood told the families of the three slain civil rights workersâ€”Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and her son Jamesâ€”that he presented evidence to the Grand Jury concerning all of the living suspects in the triple murder case. Ten suspects are living. The Grand Jury returned one indictment against one man, Edgar Ray Killen. Mrs. Chaney and her family later learned there was only one indictment because Mr. Hood presented evidence on only one man, Mr. Killen.

What does a missed opportunity look like?

When Neshoba County District Attorney Mark Duncan and Mississippi Attorney General James Hood spoke about the Killen case shortly after the conviction, they stated that one man--James Jordan--was responsible for James Chaney's death. "Jordan shot Chaney," they said. In 2000, award winning journalist Jerry Mitchell discovered a signed autopsy report that proved James Chaney was not quickly executed by a single bullet from one man's gun. Instead, Chaney's body showed signs of torture: his left arm broken in one place, his right arm broken in two places, trauma to his groin area. There is also longstanding evidence that Chaney was shot by more than one person.

What does a missed opportunity look like?

In 2004, a local Mississippi group called the Philadelphia Coalition issued a call for justice in the Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman murders. The Coalition routinely takes credit for pressuring Mississippi to bring charges against Edgar Ray Killen. Since the Killen conviction, Civil Rights Movement veterans and others have been asking, why only Killen? Co-chair of the Philadelphia Coalition, James E. Prince III, has been asking for tourist dollars to come to Philadelphia, his latest scheme: a civil rights museum for the infamously racist town.

What does a missed opportunity look like?

Try this scenario:

February 26, 2007. On the forty-second anniversary of Jimmie Lee Jackson's death, a Grand Jury indicts James Bonard Fowler on murder charges. Six months later, on August 6, amid fanfare for the forty-second anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, Fowler is found guilty--but of manslaughter, not murder. The jury could not agree whether Fowler shot Jackson with murderous intent or in self-defense. Some of us are asking, why only Fowler? A few months later, someone buys the former site of Mack's CafÃ© and opens a civil rights museum.

Cold murder cases from the Civil Rights era are hot stuff in the South. You can bet James Prince is not the only one telling white people that "if they can't be behind the call for justice because it's the right thing . . . then they need to do it 'cause it's good for business." Easy money and pain-free absolution present more immediate rewards (enjoyed only by some) than pursuing justice and healing old and bitter wounds.

People with better intentions than James Prince might argue that Michael Jackson and other prosecutors should be realistic and work incrementally, starting with the most readily available trigger men and bombers. Yet justice demands ambition from these prosecutors. Even if pursuing more indictments in these cases does not yield many more convictions, it can generate a process of discovery that is otherwise unlikely.
What was the role of Olen Burrage, the multi-millionaire in Neshoba County on whose property the bodies of Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman were found? What was the involvement of Tommy Horne, the former state legislator who served on the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission?

What was the responsibility of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, the state spy agency, which provided intelligence used by the Klansmen who murdered the three civil rights workers? What was the role of US Senator James Eastland, who received regular reports from the Sovereignty Commission? These questions might have been addressed on the public record if the Mississippi prosecutors had been more ambitious in the name of justice.

In Birmingham, Alabama, it was a "long awaited victory" when, after nearly thirty years, evidence previously suppressed by the FBI sent two Klansmen to prison for bombing the 16th Street Baptist Church and killing Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley. What about the other racially motivated bombings in Birmingham? There were over fifty between 1947 and 1963. What about the evidence, which I and other researchers have found, of police involvement in some of the bombings?

For every civil rights era racial murder that has been opened for investigation in recent years, there are others begging for attention. For every known victim whose case has not been investigated, there are countless others whose names are forgotten and lost.

District Attorney Jackson should publicly pursue all of the evidence and all of the suspects in Jimmie Lee Jackson's death. To this end, the District Attorney should request that the Department of Justice make good on President Johnson's never fulfilled promise for a Justice Department investigation. To the limited extent that he is willing to speak publicly about the Jackson case, Governor Riley mentions only one perpetrator. Let's hope District Attorney Jackson can keep his eyes on the prize.

Benjamin Greenberg is a writer living in Boston, MA. He is author of the blog Hungry Blues and on the editorial collective of Dollars & Sense Magazine. His father, Paul Greenberg, was Special Assistant to Martin Luther King, Jr. in the early 1960s.

Site url:
http://blackcommentator.com
Archive url:
http://hungryblues.net/pages/jimmieleejackson.html

Remembering ...

2006-08-19T02:27:00.000-05:00

Emmett Till

New Kind of Mississippi Murder Unfolding

2006-07-10T02:45:00.000-05:00

By Sid Salter
The Clarion-Ledger

"While it may not be politically correct to say so, the fact is that Mississippi's back in the civil rights murder business.

For Mississippians of my generation, a civil rights murder means just one thing - a white person killed a black person more or less for the 'crime' of being black - other details optional.

But across this nation, this state and even in the small town where I lay my head at night and go to church on Sunday, a new civil rights murder modus operandi is developing in which a somebody kills a Hispanic person more or less for the 'crime' of being Hispanic - other details optional.

What do Hispanic immigrants in Mississippi today have in common with beseiged African-American citizens in Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s?"

Continued ...

Just another meeting?

2006-07-09T15:04:00.001-05:00

Did any Mississippi state senators or representative attend this meeting of white supremacists?

If so, who are they?

Great Southern (June Meeting Report)
June 30, 2006

Members and friends of the Great Southern CofCC held their June meeting at 7pm at Bo'Dons Seafood Restaurant near Jackson, MS. Several orders of business were discussed, especially business on immigration reform. What a crowd! One of the largest in a while. Immigration issues are heating up all over the state of Mississippi. The Great Southern Chapter also made plans to assist (MCIR) Mississippi Citizens for Immigration Reform in a petition drive at Puckett Day on Saturday July 8. They also voted to assist MCIR in a petition drive against Illegal Aliens at the Mississippi Watermelon Festival which will be held on Saturday July 22, in Mize, MS. The chapter would like to thank the special guest that were on hand for the meeting. It is always good to have state senators and representative in attendance.
04 Jul 2006

Just another meeting?

2006-07-09T15:04:00.000-05:00

Did any Mississippi state senators or representative attend this meeting of white supremacists?

If so, who are they?
http://www.cofcc.org/chapters/mississippi/index.php

Great Southern (June Meeting Report)
June 30, 2006
Members and friends of the Great Southern CofCC held their June meeting at 7pm at Bo'Dons Seafood Restaurant near Jackson, MS. Several orders of business were discussed, especially business on immigration reform. What a crowd! One of the largest in a while. Immigration issues are heating up all over the state of Mississippi. The Great Southern Chapter also made plans to assist (MCIR) Mississippi Citizens for Immigration Reform in a petition drive at Puckett Day on Saturday July 8. They also voted to assist MCIR in a petition drive against Illegal Aliens at the Mississippi Watermelon Festival which will be held on Saturday July 22, in Mize, MS. The chapter would like to thank the special guest that were on hand for the meeting. It is always good to have state senators and representative in attendance.
04 Jul 2006

Till Murder Investigation Finally Moves Forward

2006-07-04T10:56:00.000-05:00

Prosecutor pores over 8,000-page Till file for evidence

By Jerry Mitchell
The Clarion-Ledger
Jackson, Mississippi
mailto:jmitchell@clarionledger.com

"War and Peace has nothing on the FBI's new investigative file into the 1955 killing of Emmett Till.

"Leo Tolstoy's epic novel of 19th-century Russia surpasses 1,400 pages, but the file that state and federal prosecutors are poring over is more than five times thicker.

"It's probably well over 8,000 pages," said District Attorney Joyce Chiles, who has no time frame for her difficult job of deciding if enough evidence exists to go forward with the Till case."

Story Continued ...

Horrifying past creates great drama

2006-06-16T06:47:00.000-05:00

newsobserver.com | Horrifying past creates great drama: "The recent re-examinations of the case, including documentary films and the exhumation of [Emmett} Till's body for DNA testing, have shed new light on the incident, while still leaving unanswered questions. Apex-based actor-playwright Mike Wiley has woven these facts and questions into a riveting evening of theater, 'Dar He: The Lynching of Emmett Till.' The cryptic main title becomes devastatingly clear within the show."

Continued

THE BRAD BLOG: "BUSBY/BILBRAY ELECTION IN DOUBT: New Numbers Analyzed while Absentee Ballots Reportedly Increase Margin for Bilbray..."

2006-06-11T03:14:00.000-05:00

"...[P]lease note the reported margin seems to be widening between Busby and Bilbray as absentee and provisionals are reportedly being counted, according to the San Diego County Registrar of Voters website. The intially reported 4,700 votes on Election Night has grown to some 6,100 votes at this hour.

Given Busby's concerted campaign, prior to the election, to encourage folks to vote by Absentee Ballot -- as the good Thom Hartmann was kind enough to tip me off to -- the increasing spread in the margin as absentees are tallied is certainly worth watching closely. Particularly with the odd absentee numbers reported that we covered last night."

BRAD BLOG continued --

A new kind of Mississippi civil rights murder unfolding - The Clarion-Ledger

2006-06-09T15:36:00.000-05:00

A new kind of Mississippi civil rights murder unfolding - The Clarion-Ledger: "A new kind of Mississippi civil rights murder unfolding
By Sid Salter
ssalter@clarionledger.com

While it may not be politically correct to say so, the fact is that Mississippi's back in the civil rights murder business.

For Mississippians of my generation, a civil rights murder means just one thing - a white person killed a black person more or less for the 'crime' of being black - other details optional.

But across this nation, this state and even in the small town where I lay my head at night and go to church on Sunday, a new civil rights murder modus operandi is developing in which a somebody kills a Hispanic person more or less for the 'crime' of being Hispanic - other details optional.

What do Hispanic immigrants in Mississippi today have in common with beseiged African-American citizens in Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s?"

Continued

Voting Rights Act Stalled - Are We Surpprised?

2006-05-24T14:40:00.000-05:00

Voting Rights Act stalled - The Clarion-Ledger: "WASHINGTON — A group of Southern Republicans, including a Mississippi congressman, have stalled House leadership plans to renew key provisions of the Voting Rights Act before lawmakers recess for the Memorial Day holiday.

About 20 GOP members led by Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia met Thursday to discuss their concerns about certain provisions of the act they say are no longer needed or impose a financial burden on states."

Continued ...

Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal: Apologies Change Future

2006-05-23T22:43:00.000-05:00

djournal.com: "If apologies don't matter, why were our mamas so insistent?

That question has come to mind since Gov. Haley Barbour has declined to sign a pardon for Clyde Kennard - God rest his soul - a black veteran who had the temerity to believe in 1960 that after putting his life on the line for his nation in Korea, he should at least be able to take college courses near his home in Hattiesburg."

More ...

Pardon Unlikely for Civil Rights Advocate - New York Times

2006-05-07T05:58:00.000-05:00

Pardon Unlikely for Civil Rights Advocate - New York Times: "Last month, Mr. Kennard's supporters asked Governor Barbour, a Republican, for a pardon. The state parole board must first make a recommendation, but Mr. Barbour has already said he will not consider granting one.
'The governor hasn't pardoned anyone, be it alive or deceased,' said Mr. Barbour's spokesman, Pete Smith. 'The governor isn't going to issue a pardon here.'
Mr. Smith added that a pardon would be an empty gesture.
'The governor believes that Clyde Kennard was wronged, and if he were alive today his rights would be restored,' Mr. Smith said. 'There's nothing the governor can do for Clyde Kennard right now.'
Mr. Kennard's case, which was the subject of a recent three-month investigation by The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss., has also been pursued by students at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Ill., and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University's law school, in Chicago. Several of the students involved said they were baffled by Mr. Barbour's response.
'Please,' said Mona Ghadiri, 17, a senior at Stevenson High, addressing Governor Barbour, 'if you are going to say no, at least give us a decent reason.'"

* Announcement *

2006-05-03T22:05:00.000-05:00

42nd Annual Memorial Service for

James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner
and all Mississippi Civil Rights Martyrs
and Tell It Like It Was and Is Conference

Longdale Community Center site

County Road 632

Neshoba County, Mississippi

June 17 - 18, 2006

You are invited to attend the 42nd Annual Memorial Service and Tell It Like It Was and Is Conference. We shall remember and honor the three slain civil rights workers, James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and all Mississippi civil rights movement martyrs.

The services and conference will be held on June 17 and 18 at the location of the former Longdale community center on County Road 632 in the Longdale community in Neshoba County, Mississippi. The location can be reached from Philadelphia, Mississippi by going east approximately 2 miles on highway 16, then turning left on county road 482 and proceeding about 7 miles, then turning right on county road 632 and proceeding for about 1 1/2 miles. The former community center site is on the right.

We encourage people to come as early and stay as late as they wish to visit with old and new friends.

The service and conference activities will be conducted outdoors on the Steele family’s land. There is ample shade and ample parking. A backup indoor site has been arranged, so there will not be a problem in the event of rain. The community on the road people will travel to get to the site is friendly to our cause. There will be much and varied food, from barbeque to healthy salads, for attendees. Thanks in advance to the food committee.

This will be an event for remembering, conversation, exchanging thoughts and ideas, strategizing and calling for justice in the murders of Mississippi civil rights movement martyrs and for strategizing for continuing the struggle against racial oppression of people of color in Mississippi.

Concerns and Issues

We shall remember and honor James Chaney, Andrew Goodman Michael Schwerner, and all Mississippi civil rights movement martyrs.

We shall address issues that are of concern in the year 2006, including:

“Why only Killen?” One year ago on January 6, 2005, Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen was indicted on state murder charges. He was convicted on three counts of manslaughter on June 21, 2005. Eight other men who were indicted by federal grand juries in the 1960s on conspiracy to deny civil rights or other charges in connection with the murders of the three civil rights workers are still living. But the state of Mississippi brought charges against only Killen and then at the late date of 2005. If the still living people responsible for the murders of the young men are not held accountable by the state of Mississippi, it sends a message that even in 2006 Southern white racists can get away with murder in the United States of America. These eight previously charged men should be thoroughly investigated, and indicted and prosecuted by the state of Mississippi as appropriate.

There were at least 8 other bodies, all African-American males, found when the FBI was looking for Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman. We demand that the federal and state governments investigate those murders and prosecute the guilty parties.

There will be a Call for Justice for a long roll of murders in Mississippi that have never been addressed, including murders that occurred decades ago, right up to those that have occurred very recently. Families and friends of all those who know of unsolved murders are especially invited to attend.

Governmental misconduct and involvement of federal, state, county, local, law enforcement, business, religious and civic bodies in racism and violence, from long ago until the present, will be addressed.

Persons who attend will have the opportunity to have their personal recollections and stories videotaped.

There will be presentations and discussions of present conditions and future strategies for overcoming the huge problem of white supremacy in its many forms in present day Mississippi, and for obtaining justice for all who have been murdered by white racists in Mississippi.

Speakers and Program Participants

Speakers thus far for this year's service are:

Margaret Block - native of the Mississippi Delta; veteran of the civil rights movement, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committe (SNCC); sister of fellow civil rights worker Sam Block; teacher and oral historian; after many years in California presently living back home in Cleveland, Mississippi. (Confirmed)

Nina Boal - Civil rights movement veteran who worked in Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1965 and 1966. (Confirmed)

Ben Chaney - Director of the James Earl Chaney Foundation; native of Meridian, MS; younger brother of slain civil rights worker James Chaney. (Confirmed)

Rev. Advial McKenzie - Pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Quitman, Clarke County, Mississippi. (Confirmed)

Carolyn Hickman - native of Longdale, Neshoba County, Mississippi; memories of the times and the three civil rights workers.(Confirmed)

Leslie McLemore - Jackson, Mississippi city council member: professor of political science and director of the Fannie Lou Hamer Institute at Jackson State University; Mississippi civil rights movement veteran (SNCC). (Confirmed)

Curtis Muhammad - Civil rights movement veteran (SNCC) and native Mississippian. In the early 1960s he worked in voter registration and direct action projects throughout Mississippi. Bodies of work that he helped organize include the Mississippi freedom vote, R.L.T. Smith Congressional Campaign, Jackson Bus Boycott, Adult Literacy, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, Freedom Corps, Mississippi Freedom Labor Union, and Tent City. From his early days in the movement he learned how to be a freedom fighter for life. (Confirmed)

Diane Nash -Chairperson of the student nonviolent sit-in movement in the first southern city to desegregate its lunch counters (Nashville, 1960). One of the founding students of SNCC (1960). Coordinator of the Freedom Ride from Birmingham to Jackson in 1961. Director of the direct action arm of SNCC in 1961. Worked in voter registration and direct action projects in many counties in Mississippi. Activist in the peace movement that worked to end the Vietnam War. Co-developer of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's (SCLC) initial strategy for the Selma Right-to-Vote movement. Recipient of the J.F. Kennedy Library Distinguished American Award and of the L.B. Johnson Library Civil Rights Award. (Ms. Nash says that even though she received the awards, in fact, they belong to all movement participants.) A native and current resident of Chicago she currently works in support of several issues related to liberation and peace. (Confirmed)

George Roberts - Long-time human rights activist. Native of Kemper County, Mississippi. President, Kemper County NAACP. (Confirmed)

Dr. Cleveland Sellers - a native of Denmark, South Carolina and presently history professor and Director of African-American Studies at the University of South Carolina and a fellow in the North Carolina Institute of Politics at Duke University. He participated in some the major civil rights activities of the period: helped plan the March on Washington in 1963; as a field secretary with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee based in Holly Springs, Mississippi he participated in Freedom Summer of 1964 and the challenge of the all-white Mississippi Democratic Party; and as SNCC program chair he participated in the March Against Fear in 1966 in Mississippi. Dr. Sellers marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery, Ala., was jailed in Georgia and Louisiana, and spent time in federal prison for refusing to be inducted for the draft. His protest against all-white draft boards led to their being desegregated. He was one of 27 people wounded in a 1968 clash between state troopers and South Carolina State University students over segregated public accommodations. Three students died in what is known as the Orangeburg Massacre. Dr. Sellers was the only person jailed as a result of the incident. He was convicted of inciting a riot and served seven months in jail. He was pardoned in 1993 and the governor later apologized. Dr. Sellers is co-author of the civil rights movement classic The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC. Dr. Sellers has stated, "My commitment is beyond whatever the obstacles and distractions were, including the suffering and disappointment. I thought it was more important to achieve the goal of helping move humanity forward." (Pending/not yet confirmed)

Bernice Sims - Ms. Sims began work in Civil Rights Movement while a teenager in Meridian, Mississippi. Early on she worked under the leadership of Medgar Evers and Charles Darden. Later she worked closely with Matt "Flukey" Suarez, James Chaney, and Michael and Rita Schwerner in Meridian. During those early years she was a member of the NAACP, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). She is a professional social worker, artist, actress, teacher, and writer. In 1989 Ms. Sims became the first African-American trustee for Hempstead, New York. (Confirmed)

David Sims - civil rights movement veteran; native and current resident of Meridian, Mississippi. (Confirmed)

George Smith - Project Director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Meridian, Mississippi operation from 1964 to 1967. (Confirmed)

John Steele - Human rights activist and Neshoba County native. The Steele family worked closely with James Chaney and Michael Schwerner. The family has been the key organizers in the annual memorial services from the beginning and through 40 years. John Steele, his mother and his sister are the only three church members still living who were at Mt. Zion Methodist Church the night of June 16, 1964, when church members were beaten by Klansmen and the church burned. (Confirmed)

Jimmie Travis – native of Mississippi and veteran of civil rights movement in Mississippi. He was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In February 1963, on the highway outside Greenwood, Mississippi three whites in a car pulled alongside of and fired a burst of shots from a machine gun into a car containing SNCC leader Bob Moses, Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) voter registration director Randolph Blackwell of the Voter Education Project, and SNCC worker Jimmie Travis. Mr. Travis, the driver, was seriously wounded in the neck and shoulder. He is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Mississippi Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement.(Confirmed)

Rev. C.T. Vivian - Rev. Vivian whose civil right activism began in the 1940s continues today, tirelessly working for the progress of African Americans and the civil and political rights of all peoples. He founded the Nashville Christian Leadership Conference, organizing the first sit-ins there in 1960 and the first civil rights march in 1961. Rev. Vivian was a rider on the first "Freedom Bus" into Jackson, Mississippi, and went on to work along-side Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on his Executive Staff in Birmingham, Selma, Chicago, Nashville, the March on Washington; Danville, Virginia; and St. Augustine, Florida. (Pending/not yet confirmed)

Hollis Watkins - Native of Mississippi. Civil rights movement veteran, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Co-founder and President of Southern Echo, Inc., a leadership development, education, training, and technical assistance organization headquartered in Jackson, MS. Hollis Watkins is a powerful force in the efforts to carry on the unfinished business of the civil rights movement. (Confirmed)

Edward L. Whitfield - from Little Rock, Arkansas, where after years of segregated education he attended Little Rock Central High School graduating with highest honors in 1967. He was the first African-American Presidential Scholar invited to the White House from Central High. While in high school he was the State President of the Arkansas NAACP Youth Council, participated in demonstrations challenging Jim Crow practices, and was early peace activist opposing the Vietnam War. In 1969 at Cornell University he became the chairman of Cornell’s black student organization in a very turbulent period of struggle for black studies, and he became a national officer in the newly formed national black students organization, SOBU (Student Organization for Black Unity). Mr. Whitfield left Cornell University to work full time with SOBU and the newly formed Malcolm X Liberation University in North Carolina. After the closing of MXLU, he remained in Greensboro, North Carolina to do labor and community organizing work. He continues to work particularly in the areas of education and peace and justice. Mr. Whitfield is the Co-chair of the Greensboro Peace Coalition, and has been heavily involved in the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Commission which has been investigating the 1979 murders of community activists by Klansmen, that is known as the Greensboro Massacre. He was recently state co-facilitator for the successful March 19 anti-war demonstration in Fayetteville, North Carolina. In addition Ed works full time as a Senior Electronics Specialist in a manufacturing plant. (Confirmed)

Freedom Singing:

In addition to formally addressing the gathering, Hollis Watkins will facilitate freedom singing by the entire gathering.

Additional speakers, including more civil rights movement pioneers and veterans, family members of the three young men, family member of other Mississippi civil rights martyrs, and others will be added.

As always at the memorial service, there will be an invitation for others who may wish to speak.

We hope you will join us.

Please share this information. The service is open to the general public.

Sincerely,

Curtis Muhammad John Steele

muhammadcurtis@bellsouth.net johnora32@msn.com

(504) 236-4703 (925) 497-9868

Diane Nash John Gibson

sa3456@msn.com arrow@inet-direct.com

(773) 821-5423 (870) 972-9248

Rev. C.T. Vivian

CTV@comcast.net

(404) 505-0472

Author who wrote about Miss. civil rights dies

2006-04-26T14:31:00.000-05:00

Florence Mars, author
April 2006

HOLBROOK MOHR
Associated Press

"JACKSON, Miss. - Florence Mars, whose work on a book about the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers won praise from many but made her the target of the Ku Klux Klan, has died. She was 84.

"Mars suffered from Bell's palsy and other ailments and died Sunday, her Godson, Mark Howell, said.

"Mars was one of the few Philadelphia residents to cooperate with FBI agents who investigated the disappearance of three civil rights workers during Freedom Summer in 1964.

"Her book, "Witness in Philadelphia," was published in 1977 and chronicled the turbulent struggle to register black voters and the brutal slayings of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman."

Continued --

--------------
Witness
in Philadelphia
--------------

"Florence Mars, in her memoir, Witness at Philadelphia, described her neighbors’ reactions once the burned car was found: "[T]he mood of the town was jovial; everybody thought it was a hoax. Although the rest of the country might fall for it, Neshoba County knew better: COFO arranged the disappearance to make us look bad so they can raise money in other parts of the country." When the car was finally found, the mood of confidence quickly changed. "Many Neshobans started to rationalize that the victims had brought any mishap upon themselves because they had no business being in the county in the first place," Mars wrote."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Mississippi journalist and self-described "good ole boy," the late Willie Morris of Yazoo City, ... in a 1983 interview by author Studs Terkel spoke of Florence Mars, a liberal white woman who served as his informant while covering the Philadelphia, Mississippi story:

"Her courage comes in strange packages. She was forty years old during The Troubles (they always called that period "The Troubles") and here she was one of the handful of human beings in the town who stood up to the Ku Klux Klan."

(Excerpts from "Where Rebels Roost, Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited, by Susan Orr-Klopfer, 2005-2006.)

Dying to Vote in Mississippi (3 Parts)

2006-04-24T22:07:00.000-05:00

Too many people died trying to achieve voting rights throughout the United States. In Mississippi, the battles were pronounced. Birdia Keglar,left, a long-time voting rights proponent, was lynched by the Ku Klux Klan along with a good friend, Adeline Hamlett, on their way home from meeting with Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

Both women, school teachers, were tortured and decapitated. Three months later, one of Keglar's son was murdered after trying to investigate his mother's death. All three murders deserve the attention of the U. S. Department of Justice and FBI as civil rights cold cases are reopened and investigated.

By Susan Orr Klopfer

Part I

MARGARET BLOCK REMEMBERS going door to door in rural Charleston, Mississippi over forty years ago at the age of 17 and "right out of high school" to hand out voting rights pamphlets.

"People would see me coming and close their doors. They were really afraid. It was much worse than Greenwood," Block said, referring to a town in the neighboring county where her civil rights activist brother Sam coordinated voting rights efforts among disenfranchised blacks.

"We were always competitive. When Sam said he was going to Greenwood, I decided I’d do him one better by going to Charleston, since it had a worse reputation. Now when I think about it, that was not a very good idea."

The young civil rights workers had not been working for very long, in fact, when a Klansman tried to kill her with a knife in front of the county courthouse. "I was pulled away by a Justice Department agent. They usually didn’t protect us. But he did this time, and I remain grateful."

----------------
Excerpt from "Where Rebels Roost: Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited," by M. Susan Orr-Klopfer, 2005-2006. Read the entire book online, free. Click HERE.
---------------

Soon afterwards, a tiny Charleston woman saved Block’s life when Klansmen were "on their way into town" looking for her. This time Block’s protection quickly came from Birdia Keglar, Tallahatchie County’s first black to vote since the days of the state’s second Reconstruction, a short period of freedom for Mississippi’s African Americans following the Civil War.

"I was handing out voting pamphlets downtown and a man came running up to me and said I needed to go to Birdia’s office right away. She managed a funeral home and when I got there, Birdia sneaked me away in the back of a hearse. Someone had called Birdia and warned her that the Klan was on the way to get me."

For several days Margaret Block hid out in a small cave outside of Charleston until Charlie Cobb and Ivanhoe Donaldson – both SNCC workers from Howard University – came to pick her up and take her to Greenwood and then to the Brewer’s farm near the tiny cotton hamlet of Glendora, also in Tallahatchie County. There, she kept working on voting rights in the rest of the county until leaving for Jackson and finally California in 1966.

BIRDIA BEATRICE CLARK KEGLAR, a small and courageous African American woman with dark piercing eyes, was well known in the Mississippi Delta [a northwestern region of Mississippi] for speaking out against racism, even when she was very afraid to do so.

Born June 1, 1908, in the hill country of rural Tallahatchie County, she grew up on land purchased by her mother’s early relatives after the Civil War. The land stayed in the family and this was a true source of pride. Family members picked their own cotton, grew their own vegetables, and raised their own livestock on this family plot.

"We never picked cotton for other people – just for our family. We had good food to eat, and we were fortunate," said Robert Keglar, her son. Birdia was married young, and the marriage did not last. Her husband left home when Robert was five, so mom and grand-mom raised him, and W.T. Gray, his uncle, also played an important role in this family’s lives.

They were a family of achievers. Gray, a bright, self-taught teacher, often discussed civil rights at the dinner table. "And this was back in the 1930s," Robert Keglar said, "when black children typically attended small country schools overseen by poorly educated teachers."

The Gray family had a strong tradition of learning and teaching, a skill that Robert’s uncle passed on to him. Birdia Keglar went into business instead of teaching, managing a funeral home in Charleston.

Following another family tradition, she was an early civil rights advocate, not easy for any black person of those times, particularly in Tallahatchie County, one of the Delta’s strongholds for the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the most violent of the Klan organizations.

While most of Mississippi’s Klan activity took place in Southern counties, this part of the hill country at the edge of the Delta boasted Klan members as well as neighboring Leflore, Sunflower, Quitman and other Delta counties. [A Klansman from Leflore County in 1963 killed Mississippi civil rights leader, Medgar Evers.]

Birdia Keglar’s fighting spirit frequently roused the attention of Sheriff Ellett R. Dogan, "notorious for his violence to Negroes." One Charleston native, a close friend of Keglar’s and later the county’s NAACP president, described the late sheriff as a "paternalistic man, who sometimes acted like he cared" about Keglar and other black citizens.

"Dogan might put his arm around you and tell you not to worry, because there would always be a meal for you and a place to live. But you had to be a good Negro to get this kind of treatment from him," Lucy Boyd said.

"When he was bad, he was very bad. And that was how it was most of the time in Charleston. I remember a time when I was younger and a black man accidentally bumped a white woman’s arm – just bumped her. This was on the sidewalk, and the woman’s husband beat the hell out of the black man. This was not unusual and Dogan wouldn’t have stopped it."

Boyd, born Lucy Garvin on November 3, 1930, also in Tallahatchie County, became one of Keglar’s close friends, despite their age differences.

"Birdia would say that she was ‘supposed to do important things’ in her life – and she always was going out somewhere to do them.

"One day I heard her tell several others she was going ‘into the Delta’ to do something for civil rights – I don’t remember exactly what it was, except that she often went places with Amzie Moore over in Cleveland, a Mississippi Delta civil rights icon who was organizing blacks well before World War II.

"I had two dollars in my purse, and that was a lot of money. I handed it to Birdia and said ‘you are probably going to need this.’ I thought that I could at least give her something to get some food while she was out there working for the rest of us. I guess I was born to be involved. She was quite surprised. I don’t think anyone else had done this for her; it was the beginning of our long friendship."

Birdia Keglar first became known by the state’s Sovereignty Commission, a state-funded organization formed in 1955 to fight integration and voting rights for blacks, because of her voting records. While the Commission maintained a formal headquarters and included various legislators and businessmen as board members, it also maintained a link to the Klan, very likely funding some of the Klan’s terrorism against Mississippi blacks who spoke or acted out.

Keglar first appeared on the Commission’s radar after investigator Tom Scarbrough visited Charleston on November 17, 1961 and then filed a report about "problems" brought on by Keglar, Gray, and S. N. Drake, all voting rights activists. Sent back to Charleston to gather details, the former FBI agent met with Sheriff Dogan, Circuit Clerk Tom Harris, and Judge George Payne Cossar who reported they had been summoned by the Federal Civil Rights "Department" [sic] to appear in Oxford, Mississippi’s Federal Court on December 13, a month away, over voting irregularities in Tallahatchie County.

"All three Negroes [Keglar, Gray and Drake] proffered charges against the two officials alleging they had refused to sell them a poll tax [stamp] and to register them to vote," Scarbrough reported.

----------------
Excerpt from "Where Rebels Roost: Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited," by M. Susan Orr-Klopfer, 2005-2006. Read the entire book online, free. Click HERE.
---------------

Keglar had tried to pay the required poll tax for ten years, but said she was refused each time by the Sheriff’s department, that no one would accept her money. Drake, a retired schoolteacher, made the same complaint, adding the excuse used by Clerk Harris in February 1960 was that all of the registration books were in Jackson, Mississippi.

Harris told Drake that he would let him know when the books were returned but Drake said the clerk never notified him, Scarbrough continued. At the time Drake tried to register to vote, "Birdie Kilger [sic] was with him in the clerk’s office." Keglar’s cousin had also complained about voting rights; at one time, Gray brought Floyd Bodain, David Alford, and Robert Keglar into the Charleston Courthouse as witnesses, according to Sovereignty Commission files.

"All three Negroes charged that they were denied their rights as provided for in the Constitution of the United States."[But] Mr. Tom Harris, the circuit clerk, said no Negroes have been in to try to register since the early part of 1960 and at that time, he said he did not have a registration blank. He said he was new on his present job and had not received his blank [form] to take applications to register anyone," Scarbrough’s report stated.

"Since [Dogan] has been sheriff, no Negro ever requested to pay his poll tax to him. Therefore, he [Harris] said he could not have refused to sell a Negro a poll tax." As it was, no Tallahatchie black had ever been allowed to register and vote [since Reconstruction], according to Scarbrough.

By the time the Sovereignty Commission agent arrived at the Charleston Courthouse for a second visit over the voter registration issue, those accused had lawyered up. Judge Cossar represented Chief Dogan and Dugan Shands, assistant state attorney general, was helping with both cases.

Cossar had also set up an appointment with State Rep. Walter Sillers (Mississippi’s long-time powerful and racist Speaker of the House) and the three men asked Scarborough to have "someone present from the Sovereignty Commission" at the Oxford hearing on December 13.

In his second report, Scarbrough stated that according to the sheriff, Gray and eight African Americans had testified before a "make believe" Civil Rights Commission hearing at a Methodist Church in Washington, D.C. Close to 2,000 people, black and white, attended the special hearing that drew attention to voting problems faced by African Americans in the South.

The event, described by Scarbrough as an "embarrassment to Mississippi," was sponsored by 16 civil rights organizations including the Southern Conference Educational Fund of New Orleans (SCEF), an organization often investigated and labeled "communist" by the state’s Sovereignty Commission.

In Washington, D.C. Gray testified he "tried in vain three times" to pay his poll tax and register, and that he and other Negroes were threatened with violence and loss of their jobs if they persisted.

"One night my family and I were in the car. We were intimidated for an hour and a half. After that, I received a letter from the county superintendent that my services [as a teacher] would not be required in the coming year."

AT THE TRIAL IN OXFORD on December 14, 1961, Birdia Keglar and John Doar of the U. S. Justice Department were surprised to learn that she was "already listed" on the Tallahatchie County voters list, according to the county’s witnesses. The Associated Press (AP) reported:

Shands surprised Mrs. Birdia Keglar during cross-examination of the federal suit which charges that county officials discriminated against Negroes who wanted to vote by refusing to let them pay poll taxes. State attorneys on December 13 received a list from the federal government of prospective witnesses, including Mrs. Keglar.

John Doar, attorney for the Justice Department, said he was "sure Mrs. Keglar would pay her poll tax" because "she’s been trying for ten years."

Government attorneys were expected to prove there had been a systematic exclusion of Negroes as voters since Sheriff Dogan took office, and at a preliminary hearing the week before, Judge Claude Clayton of Tupelo ordered the county’s officials to turn over all poll tax and voter registration records to government attorneys for inspection, the AP further reported.

It was not until three and-a-half years later, on June 23, 1964, when Victoria Gray, a Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) member, sued to abolish the certificate of nonpayment of poll tax in order to vote in Mississippi and on October 20, 1964, the District Court granted a permanent injunction.

* * * *

"Two Killed In Highway Accident"

A two-car crash on U. S. 40 about five miles south of town accounted for the death of two Negro women Tuesday night. The Mississippi Highway Patrol said Birda [sic] Clark Kegler [sic], 57, of Charleston and Adlema Amlett [sic] of Scobey, were killed in the accident.

Admitted to the Greenwood Leflore Hospital for treatment of injuries were Brown Lee Bruce, Jr., of Sidon, who was alone in one of the automobiles, and Jesse J. Brewer and Grafton Gray, Negroes, and Richard L. Simpson 27, white, of Mass., occupants of the other car. No other details of the accident are available at this time, authorities said.

(From the Greenwood, Mississippi newspaper, January 1966)

* * * * *

Part II

The untimely deaths of Birdia Keglar and Adeline Hamlet officially resulted from an "auto accident," even though no investigative reports exist – and most likely never existed. Still, many serious questions remain among family members, close friends, and several others who say they witnessed what took place.

Looking back to the fall of 1965, however, offers important clues: this was a time when the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) opened hearings lasting from October 19 through February 1966 in Washington, D. C. on the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, including Klansmen from Leflore County, where Keglar and Hamlet were killed.

Of all congressional committees, why had HUAC, known for its red-baiting and conservative nature, suddenly decided to investigate the Klan? Could this turnabout relate to Keglar’s death?

HUAC’s sudden shift occurred shortly after the Alabama shooting of a white Michigan volunteer who was shuttling demonstrators from Montgomery back to Selma. Viola Liuzzo, the mother of a five-year-old, was killed by a volley of bullets fired from a passing car.

President Johnson had taken an intense interest in the murder and within 24 hours of her death, with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover at his side, Johnson announced the arrest of four suspects, all members of the Ku Klux Klan.

At the time, Johnson praised the FBI for their efficient work and then urged Congress to mount a full-scale investigation of Klan activities; immediately HUAC accepted this task. But Johnson did not explain that the crime was solved so quickly because one of the arrested Klansmen, Gary Rowe, was also a paid FBI informer.

Edwin E. Willis, the House subcommittee chair, released a statement on November 9, 1965, outlining overall findings, once hearings had gone on for twelve days with testimony from 52 witnesses:

There were "about a dozen different Klan organizations operating [at that time]" with "considerably greater" strength than was estimated. Instead of a total Klan membership of 10,000, the committee now estimated "four to five times that number."

According to the HUAC report, Klans were making "extensive use of innocent-sounding cover or front names – such as civic, improvement or rescue societies and hunting, fishing or sportsmen’s clubs – to conceal the existence of their Klaverns and bank accounts."

----------------
Excerpt from "Where Rebels Roost: Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited," by M. Susan Orr-Klopfer, 2005-2006. Read the entire book online, free. Click HERE.
---------------

Further, "Klan members and officers speak about burning schools which integrate and setting off intense fires in automobiles and department stores."

Secret Klan organizations known by such names as the Vigilantes or Black Knights, the Underground, and the White Band had been formed by Klan members for carrying out acts of violence and terrorism, according to HUAC’s report.

Willis and his committee also learned of a "small minority of law enforcement officers who were Klan members," an important key in examining Keglar and Hamlet’s deaths.

As the HUAC hearings turned to the specific testimony of Mississippi’s Klansmen, three deaths of civil rights activists transpired in the first two weeks of January 1966.

The first killing received international coverage while the other two murders of Keglar and Hamlet barely made state news. (Even today, numerous "old" Delta murders remain unexamined as the more heavily reported incidents, particularly in and near Jackson, are being given a second look by the media and law enforcement.)

Vernon Dahmer, 58, was fatally injured in a night riders firebomb attack on his Hattiesburg home the night of January 11, one day before Keglar’s death, after leading a voter registration drive. Dahmer’s store and home were both destroyed because he had allowed blacks to pay in his store the $2 poll tax necessary for voting.

The past president of the Hattiesburg NAACP, Dahmer, died of shock from burns the next afternoon; his respiratory tract seared from inhaling so much fire and smoke.

Dahmer’s wife and 10-year-old daughter were also burned; the child was hospitalized in fair condition. Members of NAACP, SNCC and others attending a meeting in Edwards, in the outskirts of Jackson, quickly took off in the early morning hours for Hattiesburg after hearing the news. But no one left for Charleston.

Three deaths in Leflore County

In the early evening hours of January 12, 1966, as they returned home from a special meeting with Senator Robert F. Kennedy in Jackson, the two civil rights activists from Tallahatchie County were killed and four other passengers injured, two seriously, after their car left the road near the small town of Sidon, south of Greenwood in Leflore County.

Birdia Keglar, 56, was found decapitated and both of Adeline Hamlet’s arms had been "cleanly" severed from her body, confirm two Keglar family members, a close friend, and a Tallahatchie County minister. Hamlett was 78-years-old when she was killed and mutiliated.

Months earlier, both women were hanged in effigy by local Klansmen and warned not to participate in further voting rights activities. Each had testified before a congressional hearing in support of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Keglar and the others were coming back home this time from a subcommittee meeting on discrimination and poverty in the Delta headed by Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

Several times before, Klansmen had tried to force Grafton Gray off the road; Klansmen running blacks off the road was not an unusual event to take place in the Delta. Stories abound of such incidents, Chism and others confirmed.

Gray’s surviving second wife said that she was married after the accident "… and he would not tell me anything about it, nothing at all. I could tell that he was still afraid to talk. He had told me about other times Klansmen tried to run him off the road, but he would say nothing about this accident. It affected him greatly."

Robert Keglar could not shake out details of his mother’s death from Gray, the county sheriff or any public officials, as well. A highway patrol officer threatened him to stay away from the accident site, he said, but Keglar sneaked out to Sidon to look around anyway and talked to people living near the site of the wreck.

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Excerpt from "Where Rebels Roost: Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited," by M. Susan Orr-Klopfer, 2005-2006. Read the entire book online, free. Click HERE.
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Richard L. Simpson, 27, of Massachusetts, a white SNCC volunteer who was reported as seriously injured, was not allowed any black visitors in the Greenwood hospital, Robert Keglar said. "We tried to visit him to find out what happened, but the hospital did not treat black people and would not let us into the hospital.

"They were very rude and would not even tell us if he was okay. I don’t know what ever happened to him," Keglar said. Simpson had worked on voting rights in Belzoni, a Delta town south of Tallahatchie County.

Chism believes that Simpson, "if he survived, was probably taken out of Mississippi and sent home as soon as possible. That would have been the only way to keep him safe." Grafton Gray, Birdia Keglar’s cousin who was the driver, was also injured seriously and taken to the Mound Bayou hospital, said Gwen Dailey, Grafton Gray’s great-niece.

Gray suffered emotionally afterwards and "was never the same," she said. Dailey could tell that her father was suspicious of what happened to his brother and to the others who were injured or killed:

"My great-uncle was already a quiet man. He received under-handed threats while in the hospital to keep quiet about ‘what happened,’ my father learned.

"Employees and visitors would come into his room and tell him to ‘be careful,’ but not in a caring way. When he came home, the threats continued.

"He would go out into the fields by his house and stand, gazing away. He rarely talked. Even my own father became far more cautious with his own children, and he watched Uncle Grafton like a hawk. Mr. Brewer was injured too, and he was never the same. His reaction was the same as my great-uncle."

Three months later in April, Birdia Keglar’s son, James Eddie "Sonny Boy" Keglar, died unconscious in a suspicious fire in his home.

James had been trying to learn what happened to his mother, said Alma Chism of Memphis, James’s daughter and Birdia Keglar’s granddaughter.

"My father, James Keglar, was hit on the head before the fire was started," said Chism. "I know his death was not an accident."

Nearly forty years later, she joined with relatives and friends to aid in piecing together this story as they continued trying to learn what happened the night as Keglar and others were returning home.

"I know that Sonny Boy was trying to get answers and had even gone to Washington, D.C. about my grandmother’s murder. But I never knew who he talked to in Washington. It might have been someone in the Justice Department.

"I just don’t know. We all knew they had been murdered. Nothing indicated to us that Birdia’s death, and Adeline’s death, were due to an auto accident."

James Keglar, 38, was typically a quiet person, both Chism and his brother Robert Keglar said. "My grandmother’s death really changed James. He became very angry and outspoken, and he wanted to know who did this to his mother.

"He had just come home from the military service and stayed in Charleston while I worked on this from Memphis, where I lived with my family," Mrs. Chism said.

When Chism attended her grandmother’s funeral in Charleston, she also visited the site of the car wreck to gather information. "I talked to some people who lived in Sidon and learned the other car came straight at them, crossing over the line.

"The other driver was not hurt. It was obvious to me – and to the witnesses – they had been run off the road."

"James was a lot like my dad," Keglar said of his brother who had left the military and returned home upon his mother’s death. "He would drink too much. But he never committed any crimes."

The weekend of James Keglar’s death, James had called his brother from jail after being arrested for car theft – "something he would never do," Robert Keglar said. "I could tell that he was scared." James asked Robert to call the FBI in Clarksdale, "… and I did, but no investigators came to see him," Robert Keglar said.

"James got out of jail and went straight on to a house party. Early that Sunday morning at about 6 a.m., the police came to my house and said that James was dead.

"They would not tell me what happened to him. Later, I was told by others that ‘a hired killer’ had murdered him. I know that he had been hit on the head and a fire was started that burned down his house. He died in the fire."

BIRDIA KEGLAR WAS anticipating the Jackson meeting that was supposed to be kept a secret, according to Gwen Daily, Keglar’s great niece.

"Senator Robert Kennedy’s committee was coming to Jackson to meet with a small group of people who had met with him before. They were not to tell anyone about this meeting, but Birdia, I’m afraid, may have let it slip out.

"She was excited about the meeting and would come over to our house with different suits and dresses on, asking which she should wear. The fact of the meeting and the route they took somehow got out and the Klan knew where to find them. Birdia had passed some notes about times and routes to people she thought she could trust."

The Tallahatchie and Leflore county sheriff’s departments and the state highway patrol could not provide reports or further information when asked about this accident in 2004.

Leflore county deputies, responding to a Freedom of Information Act or FOIA request refused to look for records, stating "they don’t exist."

A spokesperson for the state's department of safety maintained – "It’s been too long ago for any records to exist now." He did ask a clerk to search, but nothing was reported found. Brown Lee Bruce, Jr., the reported driver of the second car, was not injured, Chism learned during her investigations. "I’m sure his family could put on all kinds of pressure to keep anything from happening to him."

(Bruce died in 2003. A relative claimed he suffered traumatic brain injuries from the 1966 accident, but Hamlett's granddaughter said that several relatives spoke to Bruce in the hospital, trying to learn more about what took place. "He was rude and unwilling to help. But he knew exactly what we were talking about," she said.)

REV. EDWIN KING, an active civil rights leader from Tougaloo College of Jackson was in Hattiesburg when Keglar and Hamlett were killed, having attended a SNCC meeting in Edwards the day before.

King left for Hattiesburg upon hearing about Vernon Dahmer’s incident. He remembers hearing much later of Keglar’s car accident, but no further information was given.

"We all assumed it was a car accident," he said years later. No one from outside of the Delta came to Keglar’s funeral that Lucy Boyd could recall. "This really hurt. We needed them in the worst way.

"This was the ‘Free State of Tallahatchie’ and it was a terribly frightening place to be. None of us, even Birdia’s son, could dig around, and find out what really happened without taking a risk we would be killed. We could have used some outside help."

"We were not allowed to see the car – a 1965 Plymouth Fury II – and we were too afraid to push the matter. No one ever returned the brief case that held all of Birdia’s records. Somehow, it disappeared along with the car.

"The rumor was that deputies or patrolmen pulled the car away." Boyd said she remembered hearing – "and I don’t remember where this came from – that a patrolman had shined a flashlight in the faces of their victims when they were inside the car, and said ‘These are the sons of bitches we’re looking for.’"

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Part III

Birdia was brave, but she also lived in fear of the sheriff and others after she won her voter registration rights in 1961. That made the sheriff and the others really angry with her – more than ever. Rev. Willie Blue

Charles Sudduth, a native Mississippian who has studied and written about Klan murders, confirmed that decapitation and "cleanly severed arms" indicate strong evidence of the Klan’s involvement in the deaths of Birdia Keglar and Adlena Hamlett.

"Klansmen were different in their murders than others. They weren’t afraid of the law, since many lawmen were Klansmen. They didn’t run away from the crime scene but felt comfortable in staying around for a while. They also were known for torture and for mutilating the body."

Rev. Willie Blue, a SNCC member who worked in the Greenwood SNCC office and knew Keglar well, said that he never believed her death was an accident, but that Keglar "had to have been murdered."

"Birdia was brave, but she also lived in fear of the sheriff and others after she won her voter registration rights in 1961. That made the sheriff and the others really angry with her – more than ever."

The Charleston minister tells how he once scared Keglar when she was at work.

"I was driving to Charleston and outside of town a car with Klansmen started following me. I was scared but I drove on into Charleston and to Birdia’s office at the funeral home.

"When I walked in and told her what happened, she was terrified and asked me why I had come there. She was afraid I had led a trail to her."

Blue also confirmed that Keglar was found decapitated.

"We all knew this was no accident. She was in the front seat with Grafton driving, and he was injured but not killed. Everyone around here knew that Birdia was murdered but they would not talk about it.

"They were all fearful of what could happen to them and their families. There were no police or deputies who would have taken this seriously, anyway – that she was murdered by the Klan."

Klan shootings and murders were not unusual in Tallahatchie and Leflore counties, said Blue, "in fact they had picked up in the last two years, from 1964 to 1966."

He recalled an earlier shooting that took place in Greenwood "right in front of me" when three Klansmen drove up where he and Silas McGhee, also a SNC volunteer, were working outside of the Greenwood SNCC office.

"It was raining and we were waiting for it to stop. A car came up with three men, one of them was Byron de la Beckwith [the convicted murderer of Medgar Evers] – he was still running loose. They shot McGhee, right out in the open.

"But no one was going to listen to us, especially the sheriff." McGee was injured but not killed in the accident. Robert Keglar was kept away from the accident scene but slipped away to the small town later that night to try to learn what happened to his mother.

"All I saw were some people there [in Sidon] talking about the wreck. It was near a bridge and they were saying that something didn’t look right."

Don Whitten, Tallahatchie County Prosecutor, visited Birdia’s son at home that night. "He asked me permission for something, I just don’t remember what. But he asked me to sign a paper and I did."

Keglar says that he never collected the life insurance his mother carried. "The company would not pay me, and they would never say why."

The Charleston man has continued seeking information about his mother’s death. In 2004, he helped deliver FOIAs to sheriffs in Tallahatchie and Leflore counties and later wondered if that was a good idea.

"I was visiting friends a few months later. When I came home, a friend who was house-sitting asked if I knew a short man and a tall man who drove a pickup truck.

"They came to the door while I was gone and asked to see me. They wouldn’t leave their names or a card. I don’t think it was the FBI."

SEVERAL INCIDENTS surrounding these deaths provide context in searching for what happend (and why) to Keglar and Hamlet.

•In the same week that Vernon Dahmer, Birdia Keglar and Adeline Hamlet were killed, the Ku Klux Klan was under intensive investigation by the House Committee on Un-American activities or HUAC. The hearings opened at the end of 1965 and continued into the first months of 1966. As Klan representatives from around the country testified, there were planned cross burnings, lynching, bombings and other activities taking place in each of their regions at the same time their members appeared before HUAC.

•The Mississippi Klan group was scheduled to appear before HUAC on January 13, 1966, the day after Dahmer’s death and the Sidon incident. The United Klans of America dramatized its presence in Mississippi by burning over a hundred crosses throughout the state "less than two weeks after Christmas" in protest against HUAC’s resumption of hearings on the Klan.

•The Ku Klux Klan had increased activities in the Delta from 1964 to 1966, including the Hills region around Charleston and Greenwood, state several observers of the region. Klansman and longtime Citizen’s Council member, Byron de la Beckwith of Greenwood, who earlier murdered Medgar Evers, became a White Knight Kleagle or recruiter in August of 1965, and later joined the United Klans of America.

Beckwith appeared before HUAC in January of 1966, as did Gordon Lackey of Greenwood, who earlier helped write the 40-page constitution of the White Knights, the state’s most secret Klan organization. John Winstead and Wesley Kersey, also of Greenwood, were active Klan members according to HUAC reports.

Several residents of nearby Winona, Greenville, and Yazoo City were also listed as members of their respective Klaverns, according to an Associated Press reporter covering the hearings; hence, Klan activity in Mississippi was not limited to the Southern counties as it was (and is) so often reported.

•A story filed by the Associated Press appearing in the Memphis Commercial Appeal on October 31, 1965, about ten weeks before the Sidon car wreck, stated that FBI and Mississippi officers obtained in advance of the HUAC hearings, a "top-secret document" of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, "including a virtual guerilla warfare order."

The document, a three-page report, was actually an executive order of the secretive White Knights and gave details about harassment of enemies, deception of the public, and instructions for burying firearms and ammunition in case of a "crack-down." The report named Klan members in both Tallahatchie and Leflore counties, including around Greenwood and Charleston. Klan members were also reported residing in Yazoo City, Shaw, and Greenville.

•Two months before the Sidon car wreck, a Klan leaflet was distributed throughout the small cotton town "around November 18 [1965]," telling white people to get registered in order to "combat communists and liberals." The pamphlet, described in Sovereignty Commission files, also stated that Gov. Johnson and Senator Eastland were "too liberal" and should be voted out of office. The leaflet named 15 "liberals" and civil rights leaders including a local white man who served as a federal registrar.

Also named were Mrs. Laura McGhee and sons Jake and Silas, Mr. Dewey Green, and known activist and union organizer Liz Fusco. Sidon had already been targeted that fall by the Klan as one of several small havens for Klansmen to settle into, according to related Sovereignty Commission reports.

•Finally, on the same day that Dahmer, Birdia Keglar and Adeline Hamlet were killed, J. Edgar Hoover for the first time ever visited the FBI’s new Mississippi headquarters in Jackson for the grand opening. He was in Mississippi the day before the state’s Klansmen were to testify in Washington, D. C. MARGARET BLOCK, SNCC volunteer and friend of Birdia Keglar, learned of Keglar's death several months after moving to California.

"I remember thinking right then she was probably murdered. She was a smart woman, a good strategist who usually knew if there was impending danger," Block said.

Block had moved to the west coast, fearing her own life was in danger, and went on to graduate from San Francisco State University and the Pacific Union College in education to become a master teacher in San Francisco.

She returned to the Delta after 22 years where she often teaches black history to children and adults, drawing upon her own experiences, including her time spent in Tallahatchie County.

"You know, I probably would have been in that car with Birdia and Adlena that day if I had not been in California," Block said.

* * * * *

By 1965 efforts to bring voting rights to African Americans had been under way for years, but had achieved only modest success. In some areas of Mississippi there had been no success at all.

The murder of three young voting-rights activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi, gained national attention, along with numerous other acts of violence and terrorism.

Finally, the attack on March 7, 1965, on peaceful marchers in Selma, Alabama, prompted President Lyndon Johnson and Congress to overcome Southern legislators' resistance to allowing the African American vote.

Johnson called for a strong voting rights law and hearings soon began on the Voting Rights Act bill. On the dawn of its 40th Anniversary, Congress is preparing for the reauthorization of key provisions in the Voting Rights Act that will expire in 2007.

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("Dying to Vote in Mississippi, Parts I, II and III Copyright 2005 are excerpted from "Where Rebels Roost, Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited," by Susan Klopfer. See http://themiddleoftheinternet.com)

Keywords: FBI, cold cases, civil rights, Mississippi, voting rights act, Birdia Keglar, Adlena Hamlett, lynch, Delta, NAACP

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Excerpt from "Where Rebels Roost: Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited," by M. Susan Orr-Klopfer, 2005-2006. Read the entire book online, free. Click HERE.
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Troppo provare morto la gente a realizzare i diritti di voto durante unito Dichiara. Nel Mississippi, le battaglie erano pronounced. Birdia Keglar, lasciato, diritti di voto long-time fautore, lynched dal Ku Klux Klan con un buon amico, Adeline Hamlett, sul loro senso a casa dal venire a contatto del senatore Robert F. Kennedy.

Entrambe le donne, insegnanti della scuola, sono state torturate e decapitato state. Tre mesi più successivamente, uno del figlio del Keglar è stato assassinato dopo avere provato a studiare la morte della sua madre. Tutti e tre gli omicidi meritano l'attenzione della U. S. Il reparto di giustizia e FBI come casi freddi di diritti civili sono riaperti e studiati.

Kansas City Star | 04/21/2006 | Bill prompts FBI to look for unsolved crimes

2006-04-24T00:19:00.000-05:00

Kansas City Star | 04/21/2006 | Bill prompts FBI to look for unsolved crimes:

By MARY SANCHEZ
The Kansas City Star

FBI offices across the country are searching for unsolved civil rights-era murders in anticipation that a cold case unit will be established within the Justice Department.

When Congress resumes next week, Sen. Jim Talent, a Missouri Republican, plans to reintroduce a bill to create and fund the unit, Talent spokesman Rich Chrismer said Thursday.

Talent, along with Sen. Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, introduced the measure last year. The Senate approved it, but it was stripped out of a House appropriations bill.

The bill prompted it (the search for cold cases), so that we would be ready to go,said Jeff Lanza, an FBI spokesman in Kansas City.

All 56 of the FBI�s field offices have been ordered to explore possible cases and report to FBI headquarters by May 1, Lanza said.
The Kansas City office has not yet identified any cases, Lanza said. The FBI is examining cases dating to before 1970.

Alvin Sykes, an area civil rights advocate, suggested the unit to Talent. On Thursday, Sykes applauded word of the FBI�s work.

"This is wonderful," Sykes said. "Just to believe that our government is finally in a proactive mode."

Sykes was instrumental in getting a joint federal and state investigation started in one of the nation's most famous civil rights-era murders, that of Emmett Till. Till was a 14-year-old African-American from Chicago who was murdered in 1955 in Mississippi after whistling at a white woman."

Continued

Kansas City Star | 04/21/2006 | Bill prompts FBI to look for unsolved crimes

2006-04-21T15:13:00.000-05:00

By MARY SANCHEZ
The Kansas City Star

FBI offices across the country are searching for unsolved civil rights-era murders in anticipation that a 'cold case' unit will be established within the Justice Department.

When Congress resumes next week, Sen. Jim Talent, a Missouri Republican, plans to reintroduce a bill to create and fund the unit, Talent spokesman Rich Chrismer said Thursday."

Continued ...

Interview with Sue Dorfman about "Dying to Vote", 11/04

2006-04-18T18:10:00.000-05:00

Interview with Sue Dorfman about "Dying to Vote", 11/04: "Dying to Vote
First-time filmmaker, Sue Dorfman, talks about her short film 'Dying to Vote,' filmed in Greater Boston and Mississippi.

By Margaret Tranggono

Rather than take a political stance on an individual party, Filmmaker Sue Dorfman�s film 'Dying to Vote' provides a brief account of the historical human cost of obtaining the right to vote and contemporary efforts to engage unregistered and disillusioned registered voters in the political process.

'Dying to Vote' deals with two major issues: the first is that people have died, or been willing to risk imprisonment or their lives, to gain the right of suffrage for themselves and others. The second is that someone�s desire to exercise their right to choose, by voting on issues or for candidates, is so strong that it takes on major importance in one�s life. In the process, 'Dying to Vote' addresses the rights and responsibilities of voting and inspires viewers to voice their beliefs and visions for themselves and their communities through the ballot box."

Continue ...

CNN.com - Man convicted of 'Mississippi Burning' killings is hospitalized - Mar 29, 2006

2006-03-31T00:42:00.000-06:00

CNN.com - Man convicted of 'Mississippi Burning' killings is hospitalized - Mar 29, 2006: "JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) -- Edgar Ray Killen, the former Klansman convicted last year in the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers, has been moved from his prison cell to a Jackson hospital, officials and family said Wednesday."

Continued --