Murders Around Mississippi

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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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Labels: black history, civil rights movement, Emmett Till, Mississippi cold cases, Mississippi Delta

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

Labels: Black History books, Black History Month, civil rights books, civil rights murders, Emmett Till, lynching, Mississippi history, Mississippi murders

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.

Labels: cold cases, Emmett Till, Fannie Lou Hamer, Joe Pullen, Mississippi murders, Mississipppi Delta

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

Labels: Barack Obama, civil rights movement, Cleve McDowell, cold cases, Delta Blues, Emmett Till

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.

Labels: Barack Obama, cold cases, Emmett Till, FBI, James Ford Seale, Mississippi murders

forwarded courtesy of the
Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center

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Neshoba: "Why no news?" by Charlie Leck


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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

Labels: Chaney, civil rights, cold cases, Emmett Till, Goodman, Mississippi, Obama, Schwerner

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 --

Labels: Adlena Hamlett, Birdia Keglar, civil rights movement, Cleve McDowell, Clinton Melton, cold cases, Emmett Till, Henry Dee, Henry Hezekiah Dee, Herbert Lee, James Chaney, Medgar Evers, Mississippi

# 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 --

Labels: Birdia Keglar, Charles Moore, civil rights movement, Cleve McDowell, cold cases, Emmett Till

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 --

Labels: Birdia Keglar, Charles Eddie Moore, Clinton Melton, cold cases, David Halberstam, Emmett Till, Herbert Lee, James Ford Seale, Louis Allen, Mississippi murders

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 --

Labels: Aaron Henry, Byron De La Beckwith, civil rights movement, Clinton Melton, Emmett Till, FBI, Medgar Evers, Mississippi murders

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 --

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.

Continued --

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

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

Labels: Birdia Keglar, civil rights movement, cold cases, Emmett Till, FBI, KKK, Ku Klux Klan, Medgar Evers, Mississippi Delta, Mississippi murders, Robert Kennedy

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

Labels: Aaron Henry, Adlena Hamlett, Birdia Keglar, civil rights, Cleve McDowell, cold cases, David Halberstam, Eastland, Emmett Till, Fannie Lou Hamer, Gordon Lackey, Ku Klux Klan

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.

Labels: 1965 voting rights act, Birdia Keglar, civil rights, civil rights movement James Alcorn, cold cases, Emmett Till, Hamlett, Keglar, Mississippi, Mississippi Delta

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 ...

Labels: Adlena Hamlett, Birdia Keglar, civil rights movement, cold cases, Emmett Till, Ku Klux Klan, Mississippi, Mississippi Delta, Mississippi murders, voting rights

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

Labels: Aaron Henry, civil rights, cold cases, Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Mississippi Delta

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
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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

Labels: Adlena Hamlett, Bennie Thompson, Birdia Keglar, Chaney, civil rights movement, Emmett Till, Goodman, Medgar Evers, Mississippi, Schwerner

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

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.
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Looks like they left out a little … sk

Labels: cold cases, Emmett Till, Gordon Lackey, Medgar Evers, Mississippi