Murders Around Mississippi

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."

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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

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…

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Labels: Birdia Keglar, Charles Eddie Moore, civil rights movement, Cleve McDowell, cold cases, Goodman, Gordon Lackey, Henry Dee, Henry Hezekiah Dee, James Ford Seale, John Lewis, KKK

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.

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Labels: Charles Eddie Moore, civil rights, cold cases, Henry Hezekiah Dee, Homochitto National Forest, James Ford Seale, KKK, lynch, Mississippi

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.

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Labels: Charles Eddie Moore, civil rights, cold cases, FBI, Henry Hezekiah Dee, Homochitto National Forest, James Ford Seale, KKK, Mississippi murders

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.

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Labels: Charles Eddie Moore, civil rights movement, cold cases, FBI, Goodman, Henry Dee, Henry Hezekiah Dee, James Chaney, James Ford Seale, Jimmy Lee Jackson, KKK, Ku Klux Klan, Medgar Evers

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.

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Labels: Charles Eddie Moore, civil rights movement, cold cases, Henry Hezekiah Dee, Homochitto National Forest, James Ford Seale, KKK, Ku Klux Klan, Mississippi

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.

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Labels: Charles Eddie Moore, civil rights movement, cold cases, Henry Hezekiah Dee, Homochitto National Forest, James Ford Seale, Ku Klux Klan, Mississippi, murder