Murders Around Mississippi

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.”

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Labels: civil rights, Cleve McDowell, Cllinton Melton, Emmett Till, FBI, Gordon Lackey, Jerry Mitchell, KKK, Ku Klux Klan, Mississippi Delta, Mississippi murders

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.

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Labels: Aaron Henry, Cllinton Melton, cold cases, Eastland, Emmett Till, Fannie Lou Hamer, Henry Dee, Mississippi Delta, Mississippi murders

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.)

Labels: civil rights movement, Cllinton Melton, David Halberstam, Emmett Till, Mississippi